Grimmauld Place
by Benevolent Dreamer
Summary: When Percy Jackson is mistaken for Harry Potter by a group of Death Eaters while on vacation with Annabeth in Europe, chaos will ensue as the Order tries to set the couple free and Camp Half-Blood tries to find their missing leaders. Give it a shot, please. It's set just after the Giant War and in between the Order of the Phoenix and the Half-Blood Prince.
1. Chapter 1

**Harry P.O.V.**

We were all in the kitchen when Remus stormed into the room, breathing heavily with his cloak in disarray. He looked straight at Mr. Weasley, completely serious and said, "They've got two." Mrs. Weasley gasped and drew her hands up to her mouth. Mr. Weasely looked grave and pained as he called a meeting - adults only. Why would they call for adults only? What could they possibly be talking about?...

"Why won't they let us in? We are mature enough to handle anything they have to say. Well, maybe not Ronald, but really!" Hermione shouted. I had just told her about the meeting they were having downstairs. Ron looked on, pretending to be offended.

"Calm down, Hermione," Ron said. "Nothing exciting happens at meetings anyway. They just talk about important things and then they're done. We talk about important things all the time; they just decided to make it an official time to talk about important things."

"Ron's right, Hermione. It probably doesn't matter," I said, still trying to placate her.

"Well, I don't know about you two, but I want to find out what's going on," Hermione said while crossing her arms and she marched, quietly, out of the room.

Ron and I looked at each other, then shrugged and followed. We went down the stairs to the room above the kitchen, and we all laid down on the ground with Ron and I resting on our elbows and Hermione with the entire right side of her head pressed against the floor. Soon enough, Ron and I were in a similar position, listening to the muffled voices of the Order.

"Kingsley told me that they had taken a random couple while they were out, presumably on a date. The girl, no one knows, but the boy had black hair and green eyes, not unlike young Mr. Potter," Remus began, grimly relating what he had gained from the Order's ministry connections today.

"How long have they been there?" Mr. Weasely asked.

"We're not entirely sure. Maybe only a day or two, but it could also have been longer than a week," Remus stated tonelessly.

"How…how old are they?" Mrs. Weasley asked.

"Around the children's age, probably no more than seventeen," Remus said glumly, and Mrs. Weasley gasped.

"We have to get them out," Tonks muttered.

"It's only fair," Remus said. "After all, they're only there because the boy looked like Harry; our world, a world they no nothing of, is at fault and therefore we have a responsibility to resolve it."

"So they are Muggles, then?" Mr. Weasely asked.

"As far as we can tell. Neither of them had wands, and they haven't shown any knowledge of magic, or wizards, for that matter," Remus replied. "They also appear to be American. Mind you, they will need to recuperate here before we send them on their way. The Death Eaters have some potentially harmful methods of gaining information, and simply the psychological strain of imprisonment…"

I sat up, not wanting to hear anymore. Here we were, safe at Grimmauld Place, and there were two random teenagers, a happy couple, being interrogated by Death Eaters because one of them looked like me. I felt sick to my stomach. I started to stand up when I felt a hand on my arm. Hermione was pleading with me, and Ron was staring off at a wall.

"Harry, it's not your fault," Hermione said, but I just looked at her. "Just because the Death Eaters take people wrongly doesn't mean that you could have prevented it. And honestly Harry, if it wasn't you, it would just be the same situation with someone else. But you're special Harry; you can stop him. And then it won't have to be this way, with innocent muggles being taken off the streets. You are the solution, Harry, not the problem."

I smiled at her, half believing the words she was saying and half denying them, because it was that boy's resemblance to me that caused him to be captured, so I was slightly at fault, even if it was out of my control. But we had to help those two people. We couldn't just leave them there. If we did, then we would be no better than - than Voldemort.

Hermione saw that I wasn't really listening and sighed. "Harry, why don't you and Ron go do something, huh? I'm going to listen a little while longer, and I'll tell you what they say later, okay?"

I nodded, trying not to look dejected, and Ron and I headed out of the room. We went back upstairs, and I plopped myself on my bed, staring at the ceiling. What now?


	2. Chapter 2

**Percy P.O.V.**

It was official. I pick the worst dates ever; of all time - in the history of history. So far, my top five failures were: the petting zoo, when all of the animals got loose and I herded the zebras back into their habitats while Annabeth fell into the flamingo pond; the new movie theater, where there were two accidental fire alarms, the movie was terrible, and the couples in front of us were worse than the dracnae behind us; the aquarium, where all of the sharks that people were petting jumped out of the pool and body-slammed me and Annabeth was pushed into a tank with a giant squid; the conservatory, where Annabeth and I got the worst case of poison oak I have ever seen while being chased away by a herd of flower-loving hellhounds; and the glow-in-the-dark bowling alley, where the Canadian lastrygonians I played dodge ball with started chucking florescent 16 pound bowling balls at our heads in the dark.

But this one was by far the worst. I thought Annabeth might like to look at the architecture in England and other places in Europe, so I talked to Hermes and he helped me set everything up. We shadow travelled over the Atlantic on Mrs. O'Leary, who creates pretty much the best equivalent to a blindfold ever. When we landed, the look on Annabeth's face was priceless. She squealed like the Aphrodite girls when they got a new shipment of perfume (they ordered it by the gallon). We wandered around the streets of London, past Big Ben and lots of other old buildings that were actually pretty cool. Somehow, we took a couple wrong turns and ended up by some really creepy houses, so we turned around to go back the way we came.

As soon as we turned around, I felt my hair stand on end. A man appeared out of thin air and pressed a strange looking stick to Annabeth's throat. I took a few steps back. Thankfully, we had practiced this situation before, but it was really unsettling to have to actually use the plan we made. I slid the small concealed blade down my sleeve, glad for the first time that Annabeth made me keep it there, and gave no warning as I threw it at his hand, placing it so that it made his hand flinch away from Annabeth and drop the knife. It worked well, and Annabeth judo-flipped him onto the ground, putting him in her favorite headlock.

However, neither of us were expecting five other people hiding in the shadows. Two of them grabbed Annabeth while she was on the ground, and the other three came at me. My instincts took over and within 60 seconds all three were unconscious on the ground. And then we were back where we started, only the first guy was off to the side clutching his impaled hand and there was now a vicious-looking crazy woman holding a knife to my girlfriend's throat.

"Surrender, or she dies," the woman snarled with a sickening smirk.

Then I counted. Three on the ground, the first guy, the crazy lady…someone was missing. I couldn't worry about that right then, though. I couldn't get to the other knife up my sleeve, and something told me that this lady wouldn't drop her knife if I hurt her hand. "Trade," I said. "You let her go, you take me."

"Percy, what are you doing?" Annabeth asked, and I took a step forward. The woman gasped, as did the man. I didn't realize what changed, but then I noticed I had stepped into a street light. It had gotten darker; I guess they couldn't see me before. But the way the woman was looking at me, almost hungrily…

"A trade, you say?" she asked, her eyes crinkling in an evil smile. "Very well, a trade. Come over here, boy. We'll just take you to him."

"Percy, stop! Don't do this!" Annabeth said, but was silenced with a knife. We would do much better negotiating if Annabeth was the one negotiating, and this was the only way to make that happen. I stepped over, and something hit me hard in the back of the head. I remembered being confused as the world darkened, Annabeth's shouts echoing inside my head, and then everything went black.

I woke up in chains. I looked around, but everything was dark and my eyes weren't adjusted yet. Once I could see, I looked around the room again. Annabeth was next to me, which was a huge relief. The rest of the room wasn't furnished; it was completely empty, wall to wall. There were some weird hooks and loops on the walls, but other than that it was pretty much a box with one door that had bars across the two foot tall window that was only one foot across. There was a line of faint light peeking under it, but nothing else. What time was it? What _day_ was it? How long had we been out?

"Percy…?" Annabeth stirred, waking up without realizing where we were. When she remembered, she looked at me in annoyance and said, "I'm picking our date next time."

"Yes, yes you are. And the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after-" I replied before Annabeth cut me off with a small laugh and a quick jab to my side.

"So…where are we anyway? Who are _these_ crazy people? What could they possibly want? They didn't seem like monsters," Annabeth said, and I had to agree. They didn't seem like monsters in the sense that we thought of monsters. But that crazy lady…

"I don't know," I said. "I guess we'll find out." That was one of the very, very limited perks of escaping Tartarus; nothing -_nothing_- scared us anymore. Nothing was worse than that, and that was the end of it.

"I guess," Annabeth replied. And we waited. And waited. And waited. Maybe it was my ADHD, but I wasn't good at waiting for anything. Eventually, after losing any concept of time I had, the door opened. In stepped the man from before, complete with a newly bandaged hand. I snorted when I saw his hand and the man glared at me, but I was still chuckling to myself as Annabeth rolled her eyes at both of us.

"He will see you now," said the man. He had this greasy white-blonde hair, and he looked very disheveled, as if he had been sleeping in the clothes he was wearing, or in fact, he hadn't slept at all.

"Um…who will see me?" I asked, completely puzzled by this. Who was 'he'? Why on Earth wouldn't he just call _him_ by his name?

The man came over and back-handed me across the face. The chains stopped me from blocking it, and the rings on his fingers certainly didn't help. I didn't make a sound, mainly because I knew it would make him mad and I didn't want Annabeth to know that it hurt. I spat onto the ground and looked him straight in the eye. He stared back down at me. "I need not grace you with an answer, boy. You are not the one asking questions," the man said while scowling down at me before turning on his heel and walking to the door. He unhooked a chain, and I felt the shackles on my wrists loosen their hold.

The man, Blondie, as I had decided to call him, yanked the chain, sending me off balance. I landed hard on my shoulder, but still, not a sound. I stood up and followed him, glancing back at Annabeth. We had a silent conversation, deciding to find out what they wanted before busting out Riptide. For the time being, it might be better if they didn't know I had it at all, which meant I couldn't use it. I gave Annabeth a small grin before the door to our little cell shut behind me and I started climbing an ominous staircase. Seriously, the staircase itself was ominous. It gave me this sense of foreboding that I couldn't shake. I had the distinct impression I wasn't going to like this meet-and-greet.

I walked, or more realistically, was pulled through another door, and then I was out of the hallway into a room at least four times the size of our prison. There were various people scattered around the room, none of them particularly interested in anything until Blondie and I walked in. Then, they all sat and stood straight, as if this was some sort of signal. A warning bell went off in my head, but I could take what was coming. We couldn't break out just yet.

There was one chair that was turned toward the back wall. It was occupied by the only person who hadn't gone stiff when I entered the room. The chair turned around and I was met with one of the stranger images I had encountered in the first seventeen years of my life. There was a man, I think - his skin was paler than Nico, and that was saying something. He had two slits for a nose and red eyes that appeared to be reptilian in nature. He was downright creepy. Creepy; not scary. Sadistic, yes; maniacal, yes; but scary? Not in the sense that I was used to, no. I was used to the physical embodiment of Death and the form of the being that was the darkest part of the Underworld. This guy was not scary.

The guy was also petting a giant snake. I mean, that thing was huge. It might've been an Amazon anaconda, or some sort of python, but it's body was like a tree trunk. And here creepy guy was, stroking it like Doctor Evil and his cat. So this guy wasn't just creepy, but he was also weird. Go figure.

"Is this Harry Potter?" the man asked. His voice seemed as though he was a relative of some dracnae; his voice was a mix between speech and hiss, as if he couldn't decide which one to do, so he did both. Who was Harry Potter?

"We don't know, my lord," Blondie replied. He was nervously fidgeting and fingering a stick with a snake figure on one end. "We cannot be sure either way."

"Well, _Lucius,_" hissed Baldie, the creepy guy, "Where is his scar?"

Blondie paled. "We thought he might be hexed, my lord. Or perhaps he drank a potion. We are still not certain whether or not it is him."

"There are a few ways to find out. We could always use Veritaserum, of course, but what's the fun in just asking when we know he has to answer? Nagini and I like to put on a show. We will just have to draw it out of him," said Baldie, drawing each phrase out, and my suspicions were confirmed. This was _not_ going to be fun. "Bring him over here, Lucius. Yes, chain him in right there. Now, where were we? Oh yes. Dear boy, are you Harry Potter?"

This was getting stranger by the minute. I entertained the question. "No, I don't think so. Who's Harry Potter?" I asked, but Blondie started coming over, probably going to backhand me again, but Baldie stopped him with a simple wave of his hand.

Baldie took a few slow, slithering steps forward toward me. "Have you ever felt pain, Mr. -"

"Jackson," I said, looking him in the eye indifferently. "Mr. Jackson. And yes, I have."

"Prepare for pain, Mr. …Jackson. You will answer my questions swiftly and truthfully. When I am displeased with your answers, there will be consequences. For example, I asked you if you were Harry Potter. You answered my question with a question. You did not give an acceptable answer. So, for practice, if that happens," Baldie said, pulling a long piece of wood from the folds of his robe (seriously, who wears robes?) and pointed it at me; "I will say, 'Crucio!'"

A wave of agony settled over my body. Everything hurt; thousands of poisoned knives were stabbing every inch of my skin. But I didn't make a sound. I couldn't let Annabeth hear me screaming. So I held it in, until the pain went away as Baldie again said, "Crucio!"

I exhaled. That wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Holding up the sky was exponentially more painful than that. And I won't even mention the gorgon's blood, or the curses from way down under. In fact, I felt well enough that I laughed in his face. Maybe not the wisest decision at the time, but the look on his face was awesome, as were the looks on everyone else's faces. "Nice try buddy. Better luck next time," I said. If Annabeth was seeing this, I was pretty sure that she would either be shooting me a warning look, or stifling laughter; maybe both.

However, even I wasn't dense enough to not expect his second try. "Crucio!" he yelled again, more forcefully this time. It hurt like Hades, but I had promised myself that I wouldn't make a sound. I thought about other things that were much worse than this to take my mind off of it. The Styx was worse, Kronos's scythe was worse - heck, drinking fire in Tartarus was this bad, and that was sort of by choice.

I kept thinking, but he was doing this for a long time, and it was really building up. I was biting the heck out of my tongue, that's for sure. I was really starting to have to hold everything back, including my sword, when he finally yelled, "Crucio!"

Once more, the pain went away, and the contrast was so great that I actually wanted to laugh again. But I just smiled cheekily, like he was a two year old who had gotten really upset and harmlessly punched me. "Are we done pouting now?" I asked, flashing a very openly fake sympathetic smile. "Let's try this again. Hi, I'm Percy-not-Harry Jackson-not-Potter. What's your name?"

Baldie's eyes narrowed in irritation, and his look of impassiveness slipped a little bit before returning to its seemingly constant position. I looked around the room for any clue about what his name might be. I was under the impression that this was Blondie's house, not Baldie's. The thing was, Baldie was clearly in charge. So there wouldn't be much around to get a name from. What were some common names? John, Will, Henry, Mark…Tom. He looked like a Tom. Funny, that was all I had to go on, but my instincts were usually pretty spot on. I remembered hearing Baldie call Blondie Lucius. That was weird, but I had the spark of an idea. It was time to take charge of my captors.

"Now, Mr. Jackson," Baldie said, his voice dangerously calm, "you are on dangerous ground. This is your second time asking questions. Do not do it again."

I shrugged the best that I could while in chains. "Whatever you say, Tom," I replied, following my instinct. "But next time, could you tell Lucy here," I said, nodding at Blondie, "Not to provoke my questions by not talking to me at all? I just wanted to know what was going on, and he gave me the cold shoulder."

Stunned silence filled the room. I had guessed right. Thomas, the super villain. Wow, I'm so scared (note the sarcasm). Lucy was not very happy with his new nickname, though. "Why, you insignificant little-" he started, but I decided not to let him finish.

"So Tom, what's up? Stop throwing around these riddles-" I started, but I stopped when he flinched ever so slightly at that word. Riddles…no…I did not just stumble onto his last name. That was way too…well…it was worth a shot. I made a show of throwing back my head and laughing. "Get it? Riddles? Tom Riddle? Come on, that was a good one!" I said, looking at them as if I really expected them to laugh with me.

Now they all were leaning backwards, as if I was genuinely starting to scare them. I kept up my whole 'I know all' persona and looked down the row. Crazy lady looked as though she was related to this other woman who was sticking like glue to Lucy. They didn't really look all that similar, but their hair and faces had the same sort of quality…I was suddenly very glad that Annabeth had taught me to read people. It had become easier than words to me.

I took a closer look at crazy lady. She reminded me a little bit of this old picture of my mother's Aunt Isabella. I knew that wasn't her name, but it might be close enough to get under her skin.

"Hey, Isabella, when was the last time you checked in on sissy over here?" I asked, and she shook a little bit. She really didn't like it when I called the other woman sissy. But I wasn't sure if they were sisters. Unless her nickname was sissy. Cecilia, maybe, but that was usually CC. Maybe…I looked around the room. I saw an old picture of sissy, and thankfully, it had a small caption on the bottom. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy. Narcissa. Cissy, not sissy. Wow, I was on a roll. "You know how obsessive or neglectful family can be, don't you, Cissy?"

Cissy hid further behind Lucy, clutching his arm. I decided I had better get back to Tommy boy. "So Thomas," I said casually. If I wasn't shackled, I could've been more convincing. "Why am I here, again? Can you at least tell me that?"

Tom looked stunned for a sly moment before slithering back behind his crazed eyes, looking similar to what happens when Leo drinks five cups of caffeinated coffee, except this look was evil. "Lucius, bring me the Veritaserum."

"Yes, my Lord," said Lucy, sort of in a daze. He grabbed a green-tinted bottle of liquid off of the mantel and presented it to Tom. Tom wrapped his unnaturally long fingers around it, keeping a loose yet vigilant grip on the flask.

"Do you know what this is, Mr. Jackson?" Tom asked me, his crooked mouth twitching up at the corners in a snake-like grin.

"No, but it looks lovely. Shall we propose a toast?" I asked as if we were at a wedding, or a fancy restaurant.

Tom's grin remained on his face, increasing fractionally into a smirk. "This, Mr. Jackson, is called Veritaserum. It is a truth-telling potion that will allow me to forcibly attain the answers from you that I so desire. Now, are you going to make this easy, or are you going to make this difficult?"

I had another spark of an idea. "Easy," I replied with a bright smile, and opened my mouth wide. Tom sauntered toward me, but as he walked, I willed water to fill up the bottle of serum; it was three quarters of the way empty when he started walking over, but it was about seven-eighths of the way full when he reached me. I just hoped I had diluted it enough to make my answers…interesting.

Well, here goes nothing. Tom poured the potion into a cup and handed it to me to deal with trying to work around my chains. Once it was in my hand, I knew it had been diluted enough for me to bend the rules of truth a little bit to my advantage. I swallowed it all. This was going to be very interesting.

The potion left a weird after taste in my mouth, but I ignored it. I smiled at Tom. Game on.


	3. Chapter 3

**Harry P.O.V.**

I was still in a bad mood from the meeting we overheard, so when Mrs. Weasley called for dinner, I wasn't really in the mood to go. I thought for a long time on my bed, wondering what was happening to those people - kids, really – Muggles. They probably had no idea what was going on. They were alone, in the same house as the most evil person in the wizarding world. That would be terrifying for anyone, but for two people unprepared and unaware of the circumstances who knew nothing about wizards…

There was a knock on the door. I sat up, still feeling nauseous from my train of thought. "Yes?" I asked.

"Suppertime, Harry. Come on," Ginny said. Hearing her voice was enough to make me smile lately. But my smile disappeared when I thought about that boy who looked like me. Maybe the girl he was with could make him smile just by talking to him. My stomach twisted into knots. We had to get them out. Soon, before it was too late.

I climbed out of bed and started toward the many staircases that would lead me down to the kitchen. As I plodded down the stairs, I thought about how to bring it up with the Order. I walked in the doorway to find almost everyone else already there, setting the table and putting food out with magic. Everyone started sitting down, so I sat next to Ron and across from Hermione. Everyone passed around food, chatting and laughing, Fred and George trying to pull some sort of prank. Hermione was telling Ron to slow down, and he was defiantly eating faster. I picked at my food, mostly pushing it around on my plate.

Mrs. Weasley noticed first. "What's wrong, Harry?" she asked. She looked concerned, and I never could lie to Mrs. Weasely when she was looking at me like that; no one could. I took a deep breath and let it out.

"What are we doing about those two people that Voldemort has?" I asked. All conversation at the table stopped. Everyone turned and looked at me, but I stood my ground, so to speak.

"How did you know about that, Harry?" Lupin asked slowly.

"You all don't talk particularly quietly; I was just walking past the door," I said. I would have told them the truth, but then I might not be able to listen again and then I wouldn't know about more things like this. "So what are we going to do?"

"We've already sent Tonks to fetch them tonight," Mr. Weasely said. "In fact, they should be back any minute now. I'm sorry we didn't tell you, Harry. We just…didn't think you needed any more problems."

He was right, I _didn't _need any more problems, but I had to disagree with their decision to leave me in the dark. Who _needs_ more problems anyway? That doesn't mean that problems don't exist and have to be solved. "You can still tell me; I still want to know," I said, knowing the real reason they didn't want to tell me. They didn't want me to feel guilty, which meant that they thought I would, which meant that I probably should be guilty. That was harder to take than just telling me in the first place.

"Like I said Harry, they'll be back soon. It just wasn't something that we urgently needed to tell you. You didn't need to get mixed up in this one. It's not worth the risk," Mr. Weasely continued.

"Fine. Great, actually. Splendid. When are they due back exactly?" I asked.

Mr. Weasley looked down at his watch. "If everything went smoothly, then right about…" We heard a loud crash in the other room, the sound of a table splintering. "Now," Mr. Weasley finished, before pushing out his chair and walking with Remus, Mrs. Weasley, Fred, and George into the living room.


	4. Chapter 4

**Hi Everyone!**

**I thought I'd throw in a quick author's note to just thank everyone for reading this story. I would definitely love any input you have about where this plot should go. I have the next few chapters planned out but ideas from lots of perspectives are always beneficial and can lead to all sorts of other ideas and a wonderful, satisfying story! Any review, even if it's telling me to update, makes my day, so please click the little button and leave me a note! I love hearing from all of you! I'll update as much as I can with my lovely schoolwork and show rehearsal in the way, but once a week should be about right, probably on weekends. Some weeks might have a few updates if I'm feeling particularly inspired and have the time. **

**Enjoy!**

**Percy P.O.V.**

I was sick of this place. Annabeth and I had been here for Zeus know how long, Annabeth guesstimated about two weeks, and I was so tired of being treated like ten pounds of delicatessen meat on Christmas. That first day was the most entertaining, by far. I still recalled some of my Veritaserum-induced answers…

_Game on._

_"So, dear boy, what_ is_ your name?" asked Tommy boy. _

_"Why, my Lord, my name is Lucius Malfoy. The boy has taken over my body and placed me in his. I know not how he has done this magic!" I said, in my best imitation of Lucy's voice. Isabella screeched and threw a knife at Lucy that landed safely in his shoulder. Lucy howled and I laughed hysterically off to the side. Lucy's eyes looked murderously from me, to Isabella, and back to me again. Tom simply looked puzzled and curious. _

_"Interesting. The boy shows no sign of being affected by the Veritaserum. I wonder…boy, what color is your hair?" Tom asked._

_I grinned. "Well, it's black today," I said, and Tom nodded to himself, but I wasn't finished, "mauve tomorrow, blue the next day, green the day after that, bright pink on the day after that, light violet the next day, and it finishes the week as red." _

_Tom's grin soured, and I looked at him expectantly with wide eyes. "Mr. Jackson, is it? One more question. What color are my eyes?"_

_I knew he was looking to see if I could tell a blatant lie, so I looked straight into his piercing red reptilian eyes and decided to give it to him. "Your eyes are black to color-coordinate with the house and your soul. Am I done now?"_

_Tom looked rather unsettled as he turned to Isabella. "Bellatrix," he said. So_ that_ was her name. _

_"Yes, my Lord?" she replied, looking at him in worship._

_"He's all yours," Tom said, and Isabella looked at me with a crazy spark in her eyes. _

_That was when it stopped being fun._

It was at that time that I became a sack of meat to be carved into a holiday masterpiece. Isabella had a wide arsenal of sharp objects that she liked to use, and some of them were set by a burning fire place. Needless to say, it wasn't my favorite part of my stay.

After Isabella had tried about twenty shiny dangerous toys, she sent me back down stairs with Lucy, frustrated that I had yet to make a sound. Lucy dragged me by one arm, which was bleeding, and threw me with unnecessary force back into our room. I hoped I got blood all over his shirt, he deserved it. And I hoped it never came out with all the bleach in the world. Then I realized what a pathetic threat that was, so I kept that one to myself. Lucy tied my chain in and left, uncomfortably aware that I was staring malicious holes in his back.

As soon as he left, Annabeth came rushing over to me, checking everything that was bleeding, making sure nothing was going to come close to being a fatal wound, attempting to prevent any sort of contamination, and basically being an over-protective girlfriend. Maybe she was justified in being protective in this case, but that was something I would never admit out loud.

"Annabeth, I'm fine, really," I said, but it was hard to be very convincing while she was prodding my bruises and poking at my cuts.

"Percy, you are not fine. It looks like nothing too serious, but this is bad, okay? Look, we can't stay very long if this is what happened the _first day!_ We have to find out what's going on, and then leave, understand?" Annabeth was tearing strips from both of our shirts and binding some of the deeper cuts, talking in a way that both analyzed and rationalized the solution. She was speaking rather half-hazardly, pausing to tie this or tear that, paying more attention to stopping the bleeding than anything else. Personally, I couldn't stop myself from just staring at her, thinking about how beautiful she looked despite the fact that she had been kidnapped and chained to a wall and that she was covered in dust and smudges of dirt.

"Percy?" she said, frustratedly tying the last strip in place with a triumphant, exasperated conclusion. "Percy, were you even listening to me?"

I snapped out of my daze. "Huh? Yeah, yeah, I was listening. We can't stay long, find out what's going on, leave. Got it."

Annabeth shook her head and smiled softly. "You are such a Seaweed Brain, you know that?"

"Of course I do, Wise Girl. You tell me everyday," I said, and I kissed her nose.

Annabeth looked me straight in the eye and said, "I love you, Percy."

I stared right back and said, "I love you, Annabeth." Annabeth smiled, and crawled into my arms around our chains, leaning up against my chest. Within about five minutes, she was snoring softly, sound asleep. I smiled to myself as I shut my eyes. I smiled all night long.

When I woke up in the morning, they took Annabeth upstairs. I heard some noises that scared the daylights out of me, but not once did I hear Annabeth scream, which was a huge relief. I don't know if I could have restrained myself, or if I would have broken out of my prison and run up those stairs to kick butt, but thankfully I didn't need to make that choice yet.

After what seemed like an eternity, Annabeth came back down the stairs. Lucy didn't throw her like he threw me, probably due to the glare I was giving him and the reassurance that if he laid a finger on her in front of me, I would pulverize him. Annabeth had some cuts here and there, but overall, she looked better than I did. I asked her what happened.

"Well, since you were so chatty yesterday, I decided not to talk at all. I am a fairly good actress, you know. I simply pretended to be too scared out of my wits to say anything. It was actually really funny. They had no idea that I could have taken all of them at once and won. It was amusing that they had such an easy time believing it," Annabeth said in a thoughtful voice.

"Then they don't know my Wise Girl," I said, and she smiled at me. I tore more strips and bound as many of Annabeth's cuts as I could. This turned into a sort of cycle, with a few crucial changes: since Annabeth gave them no real information, they stopped taking her upstairs except for once in a great while, they gave us "food" twice a day, and we were allowed to use the restroom twice a day. All in all, we've had it so much worse, this was kind of like vacation. However, by about the end of what Annabeth thought was the second week, we were preparing to leave.

We had pieced together that Tom Riddle, or Voldemort, was a dark wizard attempting to take over the wizarding world. He had tried once and killed many muggle-born and half-blood wizards, which were in his view less worthy than pure-blooded wizards, but he had been stopped by a baby named Harry Potter. And it just so happened that this Harry Potter had grown up to look just like me, which is why we were taken in the first place. They kept us to try to learn information about what was going on in the world, and what was going on in America. We gave a frustratingly small amount of information to him, but always left him wanting more from us; if he tried to kill one of us, things would get messy. He had also become acutely distressed by the control I had over our situation, and was starting, if I wasn't mistaken, to fear me or rather, my unpredictability.

The others, some of whom would just come and go, were simply frightened of me, and Bellatrix was furious that she couldn't break me with her toys. She was starting to get a little too creative for my taste, so I was more than happy that we would be leaving shortly.

In fact, it was three days before we had planned to enact our brilliant escape when Nymphadora Tonks came down the creaking stairs into our little room. Tonks, as she insisted on being called, though I called her Dori and got away with it, came tromping down the stairs disguised as old Lucy himself. However, she soon undid her disguise and told us that she was here to get us out. The Order, which as far as Annabeth and I had figured was the head of the opposing side, had sent her to retrieve us. That made it so much simpler for us to help later. The plan was to sneak us out while the others were asleep. Lucy was slightly preoccupied at the moment, which I took as a sign that Lucy was thoroughly temporarily detained and restrained, and we were told to hide if anyone came close. Once we reached the gates, we were going to do something called apparating, which seemed sort of like a combination of shadow travel and the flash in, flash out thing that the gods did on a regular basis. We would go to a safe house of the Order, where we would be told more and allowed to recover. Basically, we just had to make it out the door.

Tonks broke the chains with some sort of spell, though I was more than prepared to rust them out, and we were off up the stairs, using the key that Tonks had taken off of Lucy to get through that first door. Annabeth and I had practiced stepping where the stairs didn't creak, so Annabeth went first to show Tonks where to step, and I went last to watch our backs. Once we reached the top, we picked the most direct route to the front door. Everything was fine until we hit the coo-coo clock.

It happened to be exactly ten at night, and all of the clocks in the house went off. Unfortunately, one of the birds that pop out of clocks hit Tonks square in the head, causing her to squeal quietly, but it was enough to set something else off. An alarm blared and we raced down the last hallway and out the front door. We sprinted across the lawn, wind blowing fiercely, and all joined hands so Tonks could apparate us out of there.

Tonks squeezed our hands tight, but nothing happened. "Merlin's beard! Enchantments! We can't apparate inside the fence. We have to get out, now!" Tonks said, yelling to be heard over the enormous wind that was increasing in speed. A clap of thunder rang out across the sky, accompanied by a flash of bright lightening.

We ran to the gate, but it was locked, and Tonks couldn't unlock it. I ran to the fence next to the tall, proud gate. The gate peaked in an arch at the top, but the fence here was several feet lower in comparison. "Come here, I'll give you a boost!" I said. The death eaters, as these people were apparently called, started pouring outside as lightening and thunder continued to jar the morning air. Rain had started pouring down, and I felt invigorated. This was my domain: water, even if it was falling from the sky. The death eaters hadn't seen us yet, but we had only moments to get away.

"We are not leaving you, Percy, so forget about that," Annabeth said.

I chuckled that she knew me so well, but that didn't change the plan that was unscrambling itself in my brain. "I'm just going to boost you over. I'll climb the thing right afterwards," I said, but I knew that there probably wouldn't be enough time. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed to get Annabeth out of there, with or without me. We were here because I looked like some kid, so I felt responsible to get her out of it. I made a handhold, and Tonks stepped on my hands.

"We're still too short! I can't reach it!" Tonks said while grasping at the fence, hands slipping in the rain, and I got a crazy idea. Thank goodness it was raining.

"Annabeth!" I said and temporarily put Tonks down. "Show Tonks how to roll. I'll toss you two over. I can climb this pretty easily in the rain."

Annabeth kissed my cheek and took a couple steps back. She ran at the fence, landing one foot in my hand. I grunted and propelled her twenty feet in the air. I felt like one of those male cheerleaders who threw people into the air and caught them. She sailed over the fence, turning her fall into a roll and came up standing.

"Think you can manage?" I asked, preparing to launch Tonks through the air. Tonks's face was pale and drawn, but she nodded. She took a few steps back and ran. I launched Tonks twenty feet in the air, just like Annabeth, up and over the fence. Tonks didn't roll, but instead yelled a spell and hovered over the ground before landing. Unfortunately, lightening flashed right over my head and the death eaters spotted us. They were on me in an instant, and I started dodging spells and curses. "Go!" I yelled to them. Annabeth was running back toward me, but then we would all be caught, not just me. I made eye contact with Tonks, and she nodded.

Tonks ran and yelled to me, "12 Grimmauld Place!" then grabbed Annabeth's wrist. Annabeth started trying to come back toward me, but Tonks had a tight grip. I breathed a sigh of relief, or at least, as much as I could while still dodging spells. I concentrated on where they were coming from, and that made it a lot easier to dodge them because then I knew where they were going. My senses worked overtime, and I decided to still try to climb the fence. However, when I was about halfway up, I felt a searing pain in my shoulder. I had been hit by something green, and it burned like Hades. I saw Annabeth and Tonks disappear before I lost my grip on the fence and slid down. In no time about eight wands were pointed at me, and I blacked out.


	5. Chapter 5

**Hi Everyone! I am so thrilled at the response to this story. I know I can't keep this kind of posting every day, but for now, here's Chapter 5. Thanks for all of your positive feedback, any ideas are more than welcome, and enjoy!**

**Harry P.O.V.**

I rushed into the living room to see what caused the crash. The image with which I was presented was interesting, to say the least. I saw Tonks, half-disguised as Lucius Malfoy, half-undisguised as our bubble-gum-pink-haired spitfire friend, splayed out across half of a splintered table, soaking wet. Next to her on the other half of the table was one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. I had a huge crush on Ginny, don't get me wrong, but it simply could not be denied that this girl was beautiful, regardless of anyone else. She had honey-blond princess curls that were soaked and in disarray, and her face was as elegant as her perfect figure. Her clothes were in tatters, but she still managed to look stunning in a natural sort of way that couldn't be mimicked by any measure of makeup or physical alterations. I kept this analysis entirely internal, unlike Ron, whose jaw practically dropped to the floor at the sight of the girl. Hermione gave him a rather disgusted look and helped Tonks stand up.

"She needs immediate medical attention," Tonks said to us without greetings. "I did not get the chance to ask many questions before we left, but it does appear that they have been held for more than a day or two."

Mrs. Weasely hurried off with Hermione and Ginny to fetch medical supplies and Hermione's many potions. As they left the room, Remus asked the dreaded question. "Where is the boy?"

Tonks looked at the ground while ringing out her shirt. "He's still at the manor, I'm afraid. They were on us too soon. If it hadn't been for the lightening, they wouldn't have seen us."

"Lightening?" Mr. Weasely asked. "It didn't storm here. Not even a drizzle; the sky has been clear all day."

"Well, it was storming there. Look at us, we're soaked! That poor boy - why, if they don't kill him first, he might die of the chill!" Tonks exclaimed, crossing her arms and hugging them tightly to her chest, shivering profusely. The blonde girl was still unconscious; she must have hit her head. Thankfully, she did appear to be breathing.

"Tonks, why is she unconscious?" I asked, gesturing to the blonde on the table.

"She must've hit her head on this table. I would've aimed better, but we were sort of in a rush," Tonks replied just as Mrs. Weasley, Ginny, and Hermione came back with an assortment of bandages and bottles and other items that I would have no idea how to use.

"We'll take it from here, boys," Mrs. Weasley said to us, shooing us out, but letting Tonks stay to help. As we left, I heard Mrs. Weasley ask where the boy was and I could practically hear Tonks gulp from the kitchen door.

Now that the initial excitement of the moment had faded away, a dreadful sort of foreboding set over me. The boy and the girl were separated. If they weren't a very serious couple, or if they were newly together, it might not be that big of a deal. However, if I was together with Ginny, which I wasn't, but if I was, and I was separated from her, well, I think I might just have a slight panic attack. However, I didn't know which this couple would be like. For all I knew, it could have been their first date. But from the look of it, and the fact that they were American, that meant that they were abroad together, and that wasn't the kind of thing you did on a first date.

I sat with Ron and the twins as Mr. Weasley and Remus chatted away while standing in the corner of the room. Ron and I had some sort of meaningless conversation about who knows what, and then we started talking seriously to one another.

"How do you think he's feeling right now, aye?" Ron asked, looking at the wall.

"Who?" I asked, startled by the sudden change in subject.

"That boy who's with You-Know-Who. What do you think he's feeling?"

"I dunno; maybe he's upset that he's stuck with the most evil wizard to ever walk the Earth. It is sort of a downer if you think about it," I replied, unable to hold back my dry sarcasm.

"Maybe," Ron said, "but I don't think that's all of it. If I was him, I'd be glad that my girlfriend was safe and that she wasn't there any more, that's what I would feel. Sure, it's not exactly comforting that he's still there, but that would have to make him feel a little bit better, don't you think?"

Ron could be really intelligent when he wanted to be. The only problem was that most of the time he didn't think about being intelligent. But this time, he was right. I would feel much better if I was captured if I knew that Ginny was safe. Not that I was involved with Ginny. We weren't dating, I had no obligation. I just knew I would feel better. "Yeah, Ron. I think you're exactly right."

"You know, I've been thinking about the two of them, and the only conclusion I come to every time is that it must absolutely suck to be where they are, or were. They had no idea about wizards, and then all of the sudden the biggest congregation of dark wizards in the wizarding world decides to kidnap them in a foreign country and try to get information out of them that they don't have. That would be so confusing and irritating. So I'm glad we at least got one of them out of that mess. Now, one of them is-"

Ron was cut off by screaming in the other room. We both shot out of our chairs and rushed into the living room to find the blonde girl standing with her back against the wall, threateningly pointing a knife around the room like she had done it all her life.


	6. Chapter 6

**I'm back again today! So weekends are a beautiful thing for putting up chapters, and I already had this written, so I thought I'd stop keeping it to myself and just throw it out there. Enjoy!**

**Oh, and I probably should throw in a disclaimer at least once, so...I don't own any characters blah blah blah created so miraculously by J.K. Rowling or Rick Riordan etc. etc. plot is mine, ... ... the end. It hath been disclaimed. On with the story!**

**Percy P.O.V.**

I woke up back in my chains in my nice little room that I had become sort of vaguely attached to on an emotional level. I sat up and groaned. My shoulder that was hit with the green light was really sore. I started stretching it, and it turns out that the chains really helped. They acted as really uncomfortable stretch bands if you used them the right way. I wasn't planning on telling the entourage upstairs about my sore shoulder, so once I had stretched, I pretty much left it alone in case they walked in and saw it. I wondered what was going to happen now that it was just me.

Lucy tromped down the little set of stairs I had claimed. There was a step that was starting to cave in, and I had been stomping on it for days. Naturally, Lucius didn't know about the step because despite how jumpy he was, he didn't pay attention to much of what was going on around him. So when he came pounding down the stairs, his foot went straight through the wooden stair that I was setting up to break.

Lucius cursed and grabbed for the railing. I smiled; I had also been rotting the railing with a leak I created from the sink above it, so when he grabbed for it, his hand went right through and Lucy fell the rest of the way down the stairs. He hit the bottom with a satisfying thud, and I had to smother my laughter as he grumbled, trying to get up. Then I got down to business. I decided that I would pull a Nico on him, as I liked to call it. Basically it consisted of scaring the life out of Lucy by being dark and quietly powerful, and doing a lot of things for show. In technical terms, it was called plan Zeeta.

I laughed manically in the darkest corner of my little cell, eyeing the doorway in a way that I thought was sufficiently creepy. Lucy grumbled some more, and started to brush himself off. I walked along the edge of the room where he couldn't see me, then stood silently right in front of the barred door. When Lucius looked up, he stumbled backwards and made a very high pitched startled noise. I glared at Lucy through the bars, forming a twisted half-smile with the glare still evident in my eyes. I tried to mimic the physical embodiment of Tartarus that I had met not that long ago. Lucius paled until he was paler than an empousai in full-on ghost-donkey-bronze mode. I started collecting water behind Lucy and he started to stand up again. When he was upright, I started talking.

"You think you know who you're dealing with, Lucy," I snarled, trying to be intimidating, standing up that little bit taller and puffing out my chest, "but you're wrong. You have no idea what you've all gotten into, who you _think _you're messing with; it's a mistake. If you leave now, I might leave you alone. But take me up there, and you're doomed, understand?"

Lucius gulped and took a few steps backward. I took the water I had collected and slid some under his feet. As Lucy started to turn around, I took the water and pushed him forward until he was flat against my door. His feet were off the ground, and I held him where he was. I made sure he wasn't wet so he thought it was pure power that was slamming him against my door. In a way, it was. Quick as lightening I grabbed his shirt through the bars and pulled him even closer. "Watch yourself, Lucius," I said darkly. "I've got my eyes on you."

I let go of his shirt and drew the water swiftly into my cell. Lucius fell backwards onto the dirt and started pulling himself away from my door. Lucy got up in a hurry and started gingerly back up the stairs, careful to avoid the broken one. He kept looking over his shoulder, and I stood at the bars, looking through without moving. He finally opened the door, took one last backwards look, then stepped through and shut the door in a hurry.

I waited five seconds, then backed away from the door and sat in the corner. I laughed silently to myself while smiling in the dark, taking some satisfaction from finally gaining control over my situation with Lucius. He was easy, though. Next was Bellatrix Lestrange, and I must say, the less sane a person is, the harder it is to make that person fearful, but I was ready to take her on.

I knew that after Malfoy went back to Mr. Voldemort Guy, ole' Tom would send Bellatrix to bring me up. I kept hearing the name 'Wormtail' being thrown around. As far as I knew, he usually did this sort of thing but was currently out of town and unavailable. All things considered, I really didn't need another person to scare.

Sure enough, about two and a half minutes later, Isabella I'm-strange came down the stairs, stepping around the broken stair in disgust. When she reached the bottom, she stared at me. "Are you causing problems, baby?"

I glared at her with what I thought of as a sickening grin on my face. Time to really dig down to my inner Nico. We were related, it was bound to be in there somewhere. "Oh, no, not me_, baby_. I was just minding my own business and had to put Lucy in his place. You know who's in charge, right?" I asked her, grinning devilishly. I could be scary when I wanted to be, I had learned that in the war.

Bellatrix cackled and sighed, "You sure are a funny one, sweetheart. I can't wait for you to come and play."

I made my smile drop into a scowl and slid the water around Bellatrix's neck. I felt really guilty doing it, but I had to remember that it was my only chance of getting out, and Bellatrix was someone who tortured people to the point of insanity for fun. I started lifting her up.

Her eyes were flashing wildly, and she was terrified. "Listen_, sweetheart_, I don't think you know this, but I'm in charge here, understand?" She nodded as best she could. "Now you go tell _Tom _that he should come get me himself if he really wants me up there. Clear?"

Bellatrix nodded again, and I dropped her, glad to stop. It was still really unsettling to do that to someone, but I was glad it was over and grudgingly accepted that I had to do it and it worked. Bellatrix was coughing on the floor, then backed away whimpering, scrambling up the steps. I grinned darkly through the bars, and she shut the door hard behind her.

Now I just needed to scare Tom.


	7. Chapter 7

**Harry P.O.V.**

The blonde girl looked like a wild animal in a cage, and it scared me. She had her back pressed against the sitting room wall, facing the splintered table. Her eyes held a raging storm of grey and black speckled clouds that were burning with a defiant fire that simply couldn't be quenched. She seemed as though she was going to get out of here, or die trying. She glared at me, and I was ready to run, or maybe show her the door, but then her gaze shifted off of me to a certain girl with cotton-candy-pink hair. Tonks took a step back, shocked at the intensity of the glare she was receiving. The scary blonde girl took a step toward her, looking downright murderous.

Tonks stumbled backwards, almost tripping over a large piece of the fragmented table. The girl took two more threatening steps forward, then stopped. "What the heck, Tonks!" she screamed. "Why did you do that?"

I was confused. What did Tonks do? Didn't she just rescue the scary blonde girl? I looked to Tonks, but she was as puzzled by this as I was. Blonde girl cleared up the confusion, at least for Tonks.

"Why didn't you wait?" the girl screamed, rage in every essence of her being. Tonks paled and stared at the ground. "Why didn't you? We might have made it!"

"He told me to leave, Annabeth. He told me to grab you and get out," Tonks replied solemnly with a grimace of sadness.

"And you listened to him? Why did you listen to him? You should _never _listen to him when he's being heroic and stupid. That's how he usually ends up almost getting _killed!_"

The girl was furiously pacing across the floor now, still waving the knife in her hand dangerously. Tonks flinched at the end of the sentence and looked very guilty, but it wasn't really her fault. I started to get mad at this girl. She should have been grateful that we had gotten her out of that mess, not making an attempt to kill Tonks. I tried to contain my disapproval. "Um, do you want to sit down…?" I asked her hesitantly. The next second the knife that was in the girl's hand flew right next to my head. I felt it swish right next to my ear. I saw a small piece of my unruly black hair flutter to the floor and stared wide-eyed at the blonde, Annabeth.

Annabeth pulled another knife from some concealed place and said, "I don't miss. Stay out of my way," before turning her attention back to a slightly panicked Tonks. I realized that Ron was still standing in shock right behind me, and the other occupants of the house, for the most part, had joined us. "How could you leave him there? How could you; how dare you?" Ginny and Mrs. Weasley ran in with Hermoine, trying to see what the shouting match was about.

Tonks looked like Annabeth just punched her in the gut. "I'm sorry, Annabeth, but there was nothing I could do-"

"He saved you! He saved you and you left him there!" Annabeth screamed, her face red.

Wait, what? What was she talking about? He must have been the guy that was with Annabeth, but wasn't Tonks the one doing the saving? I looked at Tonks, but she looked like she was about to cry. I had never seen Tonks cry before; no one had. She just wasn't the crying sort. What was going on?

Tonks looked at Annabeth, tears prickling in her eyes, remorse clear on her face, but maintaining her resigned look. Tonks thought she had done what she had to do, but Annabeth disagreed fervently. I wasn't sure what to think; all I wanted to know was what had happened at that house. Tonks looked around the ground a little bit before decidedly looking back up at Annabeth, this time grief-stricken. There was something she wasn't telling us, probably something just as confusing as the rest of it.

"What color was that light that hit him?" Tonks asked, but she said it in a way that sounded like she already knew the answer. We looked to Annabeth, who had visibly undergone a huge transformation from the crazed, confident girl wielding a knife to someone who was hanging on to life by a thread. I didn't know where this was going, but I was sure that she did.

"Green, I think. It was green," she said after pausing to think, confirming the color after a moment's thought. Not many spells showed up green. My stomach dropped. All of my anger seeped away, leaving a cold, dark void that I couldn't seem to shake.

"Annabeth," Tonks said slowly, tears brimming her eyes about to overflow. "That curse was bad, the worst there is. It's called the Killing Curse. It's Unforgivable and illegal, but some dark wizards use it. I heard someone yell the spell, and their wand was pointed right at Percy. You said the light was green - that spell casts a green light. It hit him in the shoulder. I'm sorry, but Percy…he's…he's gone," Tonks finished choking back a sob as the tears finally overflowed and she stared miserably at the floor.

Annabeth looked stunned. She had frozen stiff at the beginning of Tonks's speech, and she hadn't moved an inch since. After a while of all of us standing, holding our breath, Remus took a hesitant step forward. "Annabeth?" he asked gently. "Are you o-"

He never got the chance to finish. Something inside Annabeth seemed to simultaneously shatter and explode as silent tears started streaming down her face in waves. The fire inside her still burned, but it was blue and cold, radiating a chill. Her hands shook as she started giving way to her tears, letting that iron wall she had built up cave in. Annabeth sunk down to the ground, heart broken sobs shaking her shoulders and piercing the air. Cries of anguish were mixed with panic, and a sense of loss spread across the room greater than I have ever known.

Everyone else in the room froze and stared at the broken girl in front of us. This boy was clearly more to her than just a boyfriend that a teenage girl went on a date with and then broke up with a week later. She liked him a lot, probably for years. The more I looked, the deeper her attachment to him seemed to be. But it wasn't until she screamed that I knew. It was even worse than my mother's scream that I heard every time I saw a dementor. This anguish was likened to living without oxygen. She loved him. The sound that resonated out of her and echoed around the silent halls was a scream of pure, unrefined agony of the acutest kind, and I have never felt more alone.

No one knew what to do; we certainly hadn't been expecting this. It was a simple rescue mission; it should have gone flawlessly. Why didn't it? After some time had passed, Mrs. Weasely ran forward to comfort the girl. She had already started to quiet down, and by the time Mrs. Weasely got to her, she wasn't sobbing at all. Her breath was hitched as she clung to Ron's mother and I was immediately reminded that this girl had been held captive for the past few days in addition to losing her boyfriend. After only two additional minutes, Annabeth was breathing normally, if a little shallow, and stared emotionlessly at the wall.

"I'm sorry," she muttered in the silence, not bothering to turn and face us. "I don't usually break down like this; it's never happened before. It won't happen again." This time, she turned to Tonks. "I'm sorry, Tonks, but I can't say thank you for saving me. I hope you understand. You did what you thought was best, and that's that. I just wish…"

Annabeth trailed off. She shook herself out of whatever trance she had momentarily fallen into and turned to face us. "We were planning escape for two weeks. We were going to break out in three days. Three days. If you had only waited…" she started crying again, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. "If you had waited, then he'd still be here."

"You don't know that, sweet heart," Mrs. Weasley said. "They might have killed you both."

"No, you don't understand-" Annabeth cut herself off, then took a deep breath like she was about to make a serious confession. "We were letting them keep us there. After they took us, we decided to stay for a few days until we figured out what was going on, then we would break out. We wanted to know what the psycho people were doing before we left to make sure that it never happened again. We were gathering information. Sure, we were prisoners, but we were on our own terms as far as keeping us there."

That didn't make any sense. They were being held captive and they could break out if they wanted, but they waited to find out what was going on? Normal muggles would be terrified for their lives - actually, all wizards and even I would be scared. Why weren't they? There was no way any of us would stay there longer than we had to, unless maybe the key to winning the whole war was about to be announced. I was really confused. No one asked any questions.

Mrs. Weasley stood up, taking Annabeth's hands in hers as she rose. Annabeth stood too and regarded us with tired eyes. "I wish I could say I was sorry, but…" Annabeth stood firm. "I'm not." With that, she left the room. How she knew where she was going, I don't know, but Mrs. Weasley looked after her, heartbroken.

Hermione took a hesitant step forward. "I'll…I'll show her the guest room. I think we all need to sleep."

We all shuffled silently to our rooms. Ron and I were sharing a room, and as we walked down the hall, we heard a slight sniffle. The door to the guest room was ajar, and we took a peek through the doorway. Annabeth was sitting on the bed, crying profusely while holding something in her hands. Upon further study I noticed that it was a picture. In the picture, there was a boy who looked quite a bit like me. He had messy, windswept black hair and bright green eyes. Mine were sort of an emerald green, but his looked like the ocean. His hands were in his pockets while he smiled a sort of half-smile that would probably make girls swoon, and he was beaming at the person on the other side of the camera. I had to assume that Annabeth had taken the picture herself.

He looked so happy. So carefree. So _normal_. And now he was dead, because of me. Because he looked like me. I felt like I was going to be sick all over the floor. I kept walking. Guilt weighed down on me like an iron blanket as I crawled into bed. I couldn't get the image of the boy out of my mind. And he showed up in my dreams.

_I was at Malfoy Manner and the boy from the picture was on his knees in front of me. Voldemort was standing in the corner, and Bellatrix was next to the kid with a whip in her hands. My position changed, and I saw the room from the opposite corner. Now the boy was facing me. Put simply, he looked awful. He had at least a dozen cuts on each of his arms and blood was trickling from his nose and his newly split lip. His shirt was slashed, scorched, ripped, and stained with blood. He looked like he hadn't eaten in four days. And he was smiling. _

_The guy was _smiling_. I'm not kidding. He had a twisted smile on his face, and the eyes of a madman. He was more terrifying than Bellatrix or Voldemort. Bellatrix turned to look at him. "Now, Mr. Jackson, I am only going to ask you one more time. Where. Is. Harry. POTTER!" A chill ran down my back. They were hurting him to try to find me. But that didn't make any sense. If he was dead, that meant that this happened already. That meant that I wasn't having dreams about the present. So why was it important? _

_Then it hit me. Maybe his answer was important. Maybe it was a warning, that they were coming after me. Maybe he sold me out; I wouldn't blame him. But I honestly didn't think he knew where I was, did he?_

_The boy sighed, took a deep breath and said, "I thought I had made it pretty clear." He stood up, hands bound behind him. "I would love to tell you where he is." Now he was walking toward Bellatrix, who actually took a step back. "I would love to sell out the guy whose parents you killed, who you hate so much." It happened so fast I could hardly see it. The boy jumped and pulled his bound wrists under his feet, turned the chains so they were over Bellatrix's head, grabbed her whip, and pulled. Bellatrix was effectively pinned and defenseless and Voldemort sat expressionless. I felt his emotions like I always did, but there was one I hadn't felt from him before. Fear. "I'd love to do those things. But I don't know where he is, and even if I did, I would never in a millennia tell you, you insignificant snake."_

_Then the boy let go of his hold and pushed Bellatrix toward Voldemort before storming back downstairs. I followed him as he walked into a room that resembled a prison cell and slammed the door shut. The image rippled and fell into an inky blackness._

I woke up gasping. Ron wasn't in bed, so I knew I must have slept pretty late. I scrambled downstairs into the kitchen to find almost everyone else there. Fred and George were running around, Mrs. Weasley was cooking, Mr. Weasley and Lupin were examining some sort of Muggle telephone, and Ginny, Hermione, and Ron were chatting while eating breakfast. Annabeth was sitting at the table with a mug of hot chocolate, not talking to anyone, staring at her plate of food that remained untouched. She was poking the mug of hot chocolate, watching the rings it created on the table. Everyone started settling down and sitting at the table, still talking animatedly. I noticed that Tonks wasn't here, but I let it go. She was probably just tired from yesterday.

I joined the conversation that Ron, Hermione and Ginny were having about Quiddich when Mrs. Weasley asked Annabeth a question. None of us heard what it was, but Annabeth didn't respond. The whole table got quiet. Mrs. Weasely tried again, "Sweetheart, do you want to talk about it? I know it's hard, but it might help."

Annabeth was staring holes in her plate, but when she looked up and saw all of our curious faces, she sighed and sunk back into her chair. She took a shaky breath and started. "His name was-" Her voice caught, but Mrs. Weasley gestured for her to go on. "His name was Perseus Jackson. But he always hated the name Perseus. He insisted that everyone should call him Percy, and we all did. He was seventeen; his birthday was about a month ago. And he was the sweetest, stupidest, most considerate, irrational Seaweed Brain you will ever meet." Annabeth said, choking up at the end.

"So was he your boyfriend, or…" Mrs. Weasley asked, smiling sadly.

Annabeth sighed and pulled out a necklace. "He was," she started, "until a month ago, on his birthday, he…we…we got engaged." I now noticed a beautiful blue-green stone set in a gray band next to the clay beads on the necklace. My heart sank. He wasn't just her boyfriend, he was her fiancé. They were going to get _married_. And now they never would.

"He's been my best friend for five years-we met when we were twelve and have been practically inseparable ever since. When we met, he had just hit his head at this camp we both go to, and he passed out right in front of me on the porch of this ranch house where our camp director stays. I nursed him back to health." Annabeth smiled sadly at Mrs. Weasley. "To this day, he still drools in his sleep. That was the first thing I ever said to him…"

Annabeth told us all about Percy, and everything he had done for the people he loved. He had managed to reconnect Annabeth with her father, and from what I had observed, Annabeth was pretty stubborn. He had accepted his half-brother, even though he had some sort of disability or something that set him apart. He had supported his best friend in an impossible dream and helped him achieve it. When Annabeth went missing once, he snuck out _on his own _and searched across the country for her, when he was fourteen! When Annabeth and he were trapped by a whole bunch of people chasing them, he got her out safely and almost died doing it. She said he went missing for two weeks trying to find his way home. But what seemed to matter the most to Annabeth was that he trusted her with his life, and she said that it had saved her world.

I was speechless. But Annabeth went on. She talked about how nice he was to everyone, how all the kids at this camp of theirs loved him, how he was good with animals (which she smiled sort of brokenly at), how he was always there for everyone, how he worked odd jobs to keep his mom in school and in her apartment, and how he was overall the most laid-back, funny guy.

I think we all lost it somewhere in there. It was so unfair that Voldemort could just pick up this guy off the side of the road and kill him. There were so many people who would miss him.

Over the course of the day, and the two days after that, we all heard more and more stories from Annabeth about Percy, slightly more specific than before. He was ADHD, and yet he spent two hours at five in the morning untying knots around a trapped sea creature who was thrashing in a net. He stood up for everyone at every school he had every been to, which is why he had gone through nine different schools after being expelled from the last eight. I thought Hermione was going to have a heart attack, but she seemed resigned that maybe, in this case, it was okay.

That night, there was a storm brewing. Annabeth went up early, mumbling something about needing to go fix some things, and something about Isis or Iris or someone. Hermione and Ginny looked at each other, and then followed her up, leaving Fred, George, Ron, Lupin, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and me downstairs. Somewhere over the next hour, the ground shook in an earthquake, and Annabeth came flying down the stairs, but other than that, nothing weird happened. She went back up and kept doing whatever she was doing with Hermione and Ginny. Everything was normal until there was a knock on the door.


	8. Chapter 8

**Percy P.O.V.**

I waited in my cell, wondering what I could do that would scare Voldy. I kept coming to the same conclusion. I had to show him that I was more powerful than he was. I was positive that I was; I just didn't like the idea of showing him. I would have to steal a wand to pretend I was just a super powerful wizard. If he found out about demigods…I shuddered. No, that couldn't happen. I would just have to be convincing.

I was still strategizing (which was uncomfortable, because Annabeth usually handled that) when the door at the top of the stairs flew open. There was no one at the door. A set of keys floated down the staircase and paused right in front of the bars at my window. I grabbed the keys. I guess it was up to me to unlock the door. I realized I couldn't fit my arm in between the bars and my chains were in the way.

I guessed it was a test. Bella and Lucy probably told him that I had done "wandless magic" or whatnot. Or I had a secret wand. I was going to go with the secret wand theory. Over the past few months, I had become very aware of the particles of water in the air. First, I used some water to continually rust and dry the chains until I could break them. Then, I took some of the water from the ground and played wizard, pulling my liquid wand out of my sleeve. I said some words in Greek, making it sound like a spell or something. What I really said was, "Float, keys, get me the Hades out of here!" But it sounded so much more mysterious and dangerous in an ancient language.

I guided the keys with the surrounding water vapor and heard the lock click, echoing in the darkness. I pushed the door of my cell open, checking that they hadn't booby-trapped the stairs or something. They didn't seem to have done anything, so I walked nonchalantly up the stairs, one hand in my pocket that held Riptide.

When I reached the top of the stairs, I casually strolled down the hall into the room where I knew everyone else would be. I stepped through the threshold of the door and everything was absolutely silent. The tension in the air was immense. Over the past few days, I had been questioned time after time. It was always the same thing: what is the Order planning to do with Harry Potter. Rather irritatingly, I had no fathom of an idea who 'Harry Potter' was, but I did know that when I found him, we would have to have a serious conversation. A conversation that would most likely start with me being upset and end with me giving him a fist bump for pissing off Voldy so much. It did require a fair amount of skill and guts.

Tom looked at me with his usual blank expression, but underneath it I sensed his unease. He seemed fairly unnerved that I had been able to get those keys, and that was fine by me. I kept my nice little water wand up my sleeve. I looked around the room and saw the remnants of a spot of blood on the floor. I winced at the thought of yesterday. Bellatrix was carrying around more than just her knives, kicking it old school like the Kindly Ones we met on a bus on my first quest, but I had practically choked her with my tied hands to prove a point, so we were both going a little bit farther than our usual tendencies. I actually went back to my cell on my own yesterday, so that should definitely have confused them. I knew I was pushing it though; today was going to have to be the day.

Bella was on my right, holding a delicate stemmed glass of something lazily in one hand. In the low light, it looked like blood. Lucy was on my right, stiff as a board, resembling a deer caught in headlights. He had no where to run. He was stuck between two people who both had sway over him, and he was going to get caught in the crossfire. Cissy didn't seem to be around, and she hadn't been for a few days, which was perfectly fine by me. Lucy said she was visiting relatives. I was pretty sure she was staying away from both Voldy and me.

I looked around rather disinterested and detached, then mimed noticing Voldy for the first time. "Oh, hi! I didn't see you there, Tom. How are you? How is everybody? Did I miss much?"

Tom scowled at me. I just kept my neutral expression and cocked my head, as if I really expected an answer. Tom turned to Bella. "Bellatrix, would you please pull up a chair? It appears we have a guest." Bellatrix paled and grabbed a chair, not so subtly avoiding going within five feet of me. As soon as that chair was out of her fingers, she was off, returning to her corner to sulk. I took my time sitting down and getting comfortable.

As soon as I was seated, Voldy pulled out his wand and wrapped both me and the chair in chains. I just shot him an annoyed look, but I could tell that he knew. Today, one of us was going to prevail. My stay would not be extended any longer. I swallowed and began. My tactic was to prove my power without actually using my powers, so that required a few steps. First, I had to obtain a wand to play wizard and not reveal my so called "wandless-magic" that was really just my various son of Poseidon perks.

I smiled at Voldy and used my peripheral vision to spot Bella's wand within easy reach of her right hand. It was too close for me to successfully grab it. I tried the other way and saw that Lucy was clutching his own wand rather tightly in his hand. There would be quite the struggle trying to pry that out of his hands, and by then the others would be on me. That left only one option. I swallowed again. I needed to take Voldy's wand.

Tom had always been fairly loose when it came to his wand. It was most frequently, including at the present, casually placed in a fold in his robes. When he did hold the thing, it was always with this sort of creepy delicate grace that would be easy to detach, nothing like the death grip that Lucy had. So whether Voldy was holding his wand or it was stowed away, he was my best bet. That way, it also prevented his own retaliation, and I could contain Lucy and Bella if they didn't listen to me. I would have to go for it when he least expected it.

I was still grinning at Voldy when a fully developed plan locked itself in my head. My grin widened and I began to speak. "So, what's on the agenda for today, Tom? Are you going to ask the same silly questions again? Are you going to throw a tantrum and give me over to Bella when it doesn't work? I'm in no rush; this is the only thing on my schedule for today."

Tom's scowl deepened and he looked to Bellatrix. She swallowed and her eyes were widened and seemed inhumanly large. Then, she turned to me and looked openly fearful. "It's nothing personal, alright, baby?" She was practically pleading with me, terrified that I'd hurt her for hurting me. It gave me this sort of sick feeling in my stomach, but at the same time I was relieved that she wouldn't be a problem when I was attacking Voldy. For the first time in her life, it looked like Bellatrix Lestrange might run from a fight.

I smiled at her accommodatingly and shrugged as if she'd just told me that the ice cream shop was out of my favorite kind of ice cream and that she'd have to give me my second favorite instead. She swallowed nervously and grabbed a variety of sharp objects off of the table. She stuffed her wand in the band of her skirt, but her hand kept agitatedly flickering over toward it. She straightened slightly and said, "My Lord has some questions for you, boy. Answer them or accept the consequences."

I sighed; I knew the drill. It started with the normal questions. "Now Mr. Jackson, when does the Order plan to move the boy?" They had somehow divined that I was part of some Order of a bird. They were the good guys, more or less, from what I'd heard. Now they thought I knew everything, but I still had no idea even remotely what the answers to any of the questions were.

Two grueling hours, several sharp objects, a few hot objects, a metal baseball bat and a thorough interrogation later, we had gotten nowhere. In fact, if anything we had backtracked, because now I was really upset. I didn't want Annabeth to see me this banged up, but at this point it didn't seem like I had a choice. I had a newly broken arm, and a broken leg, and several broken ribs. Basically, I was not thanking Bellatrix for her addition of a bat to her collection of toys. But, it was either show up like this or don't show up at all. Ever. And that was absolutely inexcusable. Annabeth would hunt me down, bring me back from the Underworld and kill me again herself if I didn't come back.

By this point, the frustration that had spread around the whole room at counter causes was suffocating. Nothing was going the way any of us wanted it to, which was impressive because there were four desired outcomes and we had reached none of them. No one was happy, and thus we were all on our last nerve when Bellatrix threw her latest choice of cutlery into the wall.

I sighed painfully and Voldy walked over to the window and stared blankly at the dreary weather outside. Lucy was all but cowering in the corner, and Bella was fuming, pacing back and forth. I needed to act soon, but first, I had to do something really stupid. Something so impulsive and dangerous that Annabeth might kill me anyway when I broke out. I had to piss Voldemort off personally while I was chained to a chair in his headquarters. It was insane, but if I could get him close enough to grab his wand, then it was totally worth it.

I started slowly, trying to talk around my broken ribs. My lungs weren't punctured as far as I could tell, but I had to be careful. Be that as it may, I willed some water down the back of my shirt where no one could see it and around to the breaks to try to heal some of them. "So Tom, now that we have gotten absolutely nothing done for some time now, I thought it would be an appropriate time to take turns. I have some questions for you, if you don't mind. Don't worry - I won't, you know, chain you to a chair or anything, but I think I'm entitled to a few simple answers." Tom flinched a little somewhere in the middle. Maybe the idea of taking turns repulsed him so much that he had to have a physical reaction. Man, he would have been a royal pain on a playground as a kid. Why not start there?

"So Tom," I began, "Where did you grow up? Did you have friends? Were you a normal child and then later on something went horribly wrong, or were you just born like this?" Tom scowled out the window, his black cloaked form tensed and ready to pounce, like a panther in the jungle. "I mean, most people aren't born with skin the color of skim milk and eyes that belong in a poorly taken picture. Were you always so peculiar, is that why you turned out like this? People made fun of you for looking different?" I felt a slight prick of pity if this was the case, but the incessant throbbing and burning everywhere else allowed me to get over that pretty quickly.

Tom folded his hands behind his back, but I knew they were clenched. I was close, I just needed to hit the right nerve. Maybe it was his parents. Or at least that would probably help. "You know, I always thought that the child was a reflection of his or her parents. Or parent. I was raised by a single parent." I paused. That was bad; I couldn't give him anyone to use against me. "She passed away last summer." There, now he thought she was long gone. I couldn't risk getting my mom involved in this. "What about you, Tom? What happened to your parents?"

Tom was as still and as stiff and as straight as any person had ever been. He was itching to give a reaction, but he was still under this guise of inhuman calm. He was screaming on the inside, but he was trying to prove that he was better than that. Well, there was one more thing to try. It was really dense of me not to think of it before. Failure was one thing that Tom absolutely would not tolerate; I had to remind him of his greatest failure.

"Well Tom, either way, it doesn't matter, not really. You see, I think a person makes their own way and their own decisions. In the end, some people are just better at life than others. So tell me Tom, how did it feel to have all of your power and practically your life stripped away by someone so young and helpless that they were still learning to crawl? And don't you have that thing with half-bloods anyway? I thought you only liked purebloods." Tom flinched at half blood. That was rediculous. There was no way that Tom was a half-blood. It was like Hitler all over again, with his blonde-haired blue-eyed army while he led it looking like the people he persecuted. Tom Riddle was a half-blood. And he hated it fervently. I smirked.

I felt low as I said the next few sentences, but I had no choice if I wanted to get out of here. "Wait, don't tell me. Tom Riddle, the Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, evil wizard extraordinaire, is a filthy, muggle-related, inter-breeded half-blood? How sick is that?"

And then he was on my chair with the knife from the wall in his hands. Our focuses were entirely different. He vanished the chains and made new ones on my wrists and ankles, dragging me down and chaining me face first to the ground, which was not fun with all of my broken parts. He put his wand back and I started working my way to it with some water. As I was about to grab it, I felt the back of my shirt being unceremoniously slit up the middle, catching some skin on the way. I grabbed the wand with the water, but as soon as I did, there was a sharp pain in the back of my shoulder. The floor was suddenly wet and sticky with red.

I bit my tongue to keep from crying out as Tom dragged the blade over my skin, carving into my upper back. I wasn't sure that this would go away with a little ambrosia and nectar. In fact, I was genuinely concerned with how deep these cuts were. My next thought: Annabeth is going to kill me. It seemed to be a frequent thought lately. That in itself was never a good thing. The good news was that Bella took good care of her knives, so it wasn't rugged or jagged or dull. The bad news was that it was really sharp, so it cut my skin like an exacto knife would cute a marshmallow. Needless to say, that didn't feel too good.

I tried to get free of my chains, but Tom had effectively pinned my arms and I couldn't think of any fake spell to use to get him off; I was too focused on not screaming. The house was creepily silent apart from Voldy's occasional grunts of frustration that I wasn't making a sound, and from whatever his problems were that he was trying to cope with as of right now. After what seemed like ages, he got up, panting, holding the bloody knife in one hand. Bella had taken a step toward him and Lucy had taken a step back.

I chose this moment to make my move. I used the water to break the chains and propelled myself up from the floor. I collected it into a shield, careful to keep a layer of air around it, and slammed Lucy and Bella against the far wall, waving the wand accordingly. I then circled Tom threateningly as he reached for a wand that wasn't there. When he noticed me holding his own wand out at him, his eyes shown with genuine surprise for the first time since I had arrived here. He stumbled back a step, and I stepped toward him, wand in hand.

"Now you listen to me, _Tom_," I said venomously. I glared at him and he took another step back. "I don't _ever _want to see you again, because if I do, I will _end_ you." I started concentrating on the rain and the clouds outside, and the rivers of England, and the Atlantic Ocean that didn't feel so far away after all. I started brewing a huge, incomparable storm like England had never seen. The ground shook as I spoke. "And if you ever go anywhere _near_ Annabeth again, if you lay so much as a finger on her, I will show you what pain is, and you will wish that you never met either of us." I started picking up the winds outside, adding some arbitrary thunder for effect. "So I suggest you stay far, far away from us, because if you ever cross me again, I can guarantee you one thing. There won't be a next time for you, and it will be the last thing you do."

With that, I shook the ground in a violent earthquake and started to take the house down completely. I used some water to burst through the side wall and out into the streets, letting the storm carry me away and leaving me with a final expression on Voldemort's face: fear.

I swept away through the road and went for a few miles until I was far enough away to be safely let down. The earthquake stopped, but the storm raged on. I didn't care all that much; the rain was rather invigorating. I realized that my shirt was all but falling off, but there was nothing I could do about that at the moment. I needed to get to Annabeth.

I remembered the address Tonks had given me: 12 Grimmauld Place. I had no idea where that was, or how to find it, but I knew one sure way to get there. I whistled a New York taxi cab whistle, and then remembered my broken ribs and failed miserably, but Mrs. O'Leary came racing from the shadows all the same. "Alright girl," I said. "Let's go."

I told her the address and seconds later I was standing on Grimmauld Place, between numbers 11 and 13. I sent Mrs. O'Leary on her way and looked. I thought there might be Mist cloaking it, so I focused really hard. When I did, a whole new building unfolded into place right in front of my eyes, front railing and everything. I staggered up the walkway, bleeding and tired, drained from the large use of my powers, and hobbling with my broken bones. I leaned against the frame and knocked on the door.


	9. Chapter 9

**Hey everyone! So I got a lot of questions last night about an update that wasn't actually an update and a glitch and such.**

**Explanation: I was going to post an author's note about when I was going to update because this week is EXAM WEEK for me (yes, it did need to be capitalized) so I wasn't going to update. But then I felt bad, so I decided I would try to post a chapter instead, so I took down the author's note thirty seconds after I posted it and started writing. So I apologize for the confusion. I have yet to read the Blood of Olympus, and I'm not letting myself until my exams are over. I didn't think I was going to post this week, so you're welcome. Have a nice day!**

**Oh, and please read and review. It makes me so happy. You can even just put a :). It will still make my day and build up my confidence for exams. Thanks!**

**Harry P.O.V.**

The knocking on the door was urgent. Whoever was out there was pounding on the door like he or she was going to break it down if we didn't open it soon. The noise paused for a second or two, then the knocking continued, harder and faster than before. I looked around the room. No one knew who it could possibly be. Death Eaters couldn't get past the enchantments without at least setting off a few alarms, and they would have just broken down the door. Death Eaters don't knock. But who else would show up here? Also, it had been steadily raining for half an hour and had drastically started storming about ten minutes ago, which just made it even more strange that someone was at the door. They had to have come here in the rain, and only a few people could apparate to the house, so this person had to have walked right up to the front door.

I gave in. I had to know who in the world was pounding on our door in the middle of a thunderstorm. How would this person have found us? No one could see the house until you were looking for it to appear. How did the person know to look? No one knew about this place who wasn't already here.

I took a few steps toward the door, then looked back at everyone else. I gestured for them to put their wands up and aim them at the door. Remus and Mr. Weasley went on either side of me, and I slowly approached the door. Ron came round behind me by a wall, taking a defensive position. The knocking was still furious and fast, and I was kind of scared of the ridiculous notion that whoever was at the door would start knocking on me when the door wasn't there. I grabbed the handle loosely, then tightened my grip with resolve. I counted to three, whispering the numbers. One, two, three - I opened the door.

Everyone tensed, wands in hand, to be met with…a boy. He was just a boy, really, not much older than I was. And he looked a lot like me. We had the same black, uncontrollable hair, but his was soaking wet. We had green eyes, but mine were more of an emerald color; his were like the ocean. I didn't know how else to describe them; they were pools of the sea. Honestly? He looked like what I wished I looked like. I was pretty sure he was at least four or five inches taller than me, but he was leaning against the doorframe, his face twisted in pain. I looked down and saw what l thought was a puddle of red around his feet. He was bleeding.

"Can I come in?" the boy asked airily. I swore I had seen him somewhere before. "Please? Is this the bird place? Have you seen a girl named Annabeth?"

My eyebrows raised of their own accord. I turned to look back at the group, and they looked as stunned as I was. He knew Annabeth? He was either her friend, or a Death Eater. We needed her to confirm. I looked back at the boy and was about to say something when we locked eyes. No one had answered his question, but he drew it out of me through his gaze. Yes, he saw, she was here.

"Annabeth!" He shouted, taking a sharp intake of breath after he yelled, coughing violently. If he was a Death Eater, he could be dangerous. Fred and Ron looked at me and I nodded. The each swiftly grabbed one of Percy's arms, but when Fred grabbed the boy's left, he gave a cry of pain. Upon closer examination, it looked broken. "Annabeth!" he cried out again and this time I heard a crash as a door was thrown into a wall and the sound of footsteps pounded down the stairs at an alarming rate.

Fred and Ron half walked, half dragged the boy through the door, still keeping a tight hold on him. However, his legs gave out for a second and they had to hold under his arms to keep him at least partially upright. It looked as though he had caught his leg on something, but now it wouldn't support him at all.

Annabeth burst through the doorway, breathing heavily after just sprinting down five flights of stairs. Her eyes zeroed in on the soaking wet boy hanging almost limply from Ron and Fred. He looked up and they locked eyes. Annabeth rushed forward at the same second that the boy fell to his knees from Ron and Fred's grip. They collapsed into each other, Annabeth clinging to the boy for dear life, shaking slightly, and the boy with his arms around her, one around her waist and one behind her head. The boy closed his eyes and breathed deeply, as if savoring this moment and finding a sort of peace in it.

Annabeth pulled back and grabbed the boy's face in her hands. She kissed the top of his head, then just stared into his eyes until they were both kissing sweetly on the living room floor. They pulled back, and Annabeth looked at him with complete joy. "How are you still alive, you stupid, stupid Seaweed Brain?"

"Well, in case you haven't noticed," the boy said, "I'm kind of stubborn."

Annabeth shook her head lovingly and kissed him again. This time, the boy let out a slight gasp of pain and Annabeth immediately turned serious as the grave. She looked around and saw the trail of blood that came from the door and ended right where the boy was sitting. "Perseus Jackson, you tell me what happened right this minute."

"Well…I might have hit a few bumps along the way…" the boy said. Then it hit me. Perseus. Percy. Percy Jackson. This was the boy that Annabeth had been telling us about for three days. The boy from my dream, the one who was taken for looking like me. The boy who was supposed to be dead. I stared in shock as he winced while Annabeth stared at the blood around him. "I might have…taken a chance with plan Zeeta…"

I had no idea what that meant, but Annabeth did. She looked panicked before she turned red and slapped him - hard. "Percy! Why on Earth would you try that plan! That was a terrible idea-" she was cut off when Percy's arm slipped out from where he had propped it up underneath him and he fell to the floor, groaning. Annabeth seemed shocked back into the present, suddenly panicking again.

Annabeth helped him sit up and leaned his back against the base of the couch. She pulled out yet another knife and cut up the front of Percy's shirt, peeling it off. When I saw what was underneath, I almost ran from the room. There were criss-crossing marks all across his chest, some of them oozing red. Annabeth simply pursed her lips as if she had seen worse and moved to pull the shirt off of his back. Percy, almost unconscious mere seconds before, suddenly grabbed Annabeth's wrist in his blood-covered hand, looking into her eyes.

Again, I was hopelessly confused, but Annabeth seemed to know exactly what he meant, and her expression became an unreadable mask. She helped him sit up away from the couch, despite his moans of protest, and pulled off the back of his shirt. She took a sharp breath in before stumbling away, back into a table. She almost tripped backwards over the rug, but Percy somehow stood up and caught her hand in one of his, steadying her. Now that he was standing, we could all see his back, and it was horrifying. It looked like someone had carved the word "HALFBLOOD" into his skin with a knife. Below that were some painful looking burns and gashes that were oozing blood, surrounded by purple bruises.

The girls had followed Annabeth down the stairs, and I heard Mrs. Weasley let out a slight scream. Percy turned around to face us, with a confused look on his face. Then he looked at the ground and his eyes widened. "Oh, gods! I'm sorry. I'll clean it up later, I promise."

I just looked at him. Seriously, he was bleeding profusely and was probably in a huge amount of pain, and he was worried about staining the carpet? I would have been screaming on the ground if I was that hurt, but all that concerned him was getting blood on the couch. I couldn't tell if he was kidding or serious, but Annabeth just started laughing despite the situation, kind of hysterically, hands on her knees. She stood up and flipped her loose ponytail over her head, then looked at Percy in adoration. "You are _such_ a Seaweed Brain, you know that? I thought I lost you, but here you are, being so _dense!_"

He grinned at her but then his legs seemed to give out again. Annabeth caught his arms, but when she grabbed his left, he cried out again. I looked down to see why his legs kept giving out and saw that his right leg was severely broken. So he had a broken leg and a broken arm, and yet he got up to catch Annabeth before she fell over. I knew that she loved him, but I was starting to understand that he loved her too.

Annabeth led him to the couch. He sat gingerly and Annabeth looked him over for a second before turning to us. Her face was set in a hard look, her eyes calculating at a million miles an hour. "Okay, listen to me right now. Mr. Weasley, Mr. Lupin, I need you two to go find some boards of wood. They don't have to be two-by-fours, but that would be great. Ginny, Hermione, I need you two to find any sort of bandages in the house; old tee-shirts, medical tape, first aid kits-anything you can find. Ron, Harry-" My head jerked up. "I need you two to go with Mrs. Weasley and find any medicine that's in the house, whether it's for allergies or heart problems or whatever, just bring it here. Fred, George, I need you all to collect anything interesting that you have sitting around that you think might help. And for crying out loud, will someone go wake up Tonks? Tell her to meet me here." We were all staring at her in shock. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go!" She said, and we all ran off in various directions.

Annabeth was helping Percy lay down on the couch. He was in a lot more pain than he was showing, I could tell that much. Annabeth's face was gentle as she held his hand, whispering something to him. Ron and I turned to Mrs. Weasley. "Where should we look?" I asked.

Mrs. Weasley was staring at the two of them with tears in her eyes, but she blinked them away and looked at us with a determined expression I don't remember ever seeing on her face before. "Ron, show Harry where the second floor bathroom is so he can look there, then I want you to check that cupboard under the basement staircase. I'm going to check the kitchen and the bedroom. Bring everything you find back here. Shoo!" She said, and Ron and I looked at each other, then started for the stairs.

When we all reconvened, Tonks was standing with Annabeth, and everyone was holding a strange assortment of items. Annabeth herself had several large basins of water. Annabeth looked at everything, then said, "Ron, Harry, put those on the ground over there. See if you can find a little table or something and bring it in. Mr. Weasley and Mr. Lupin, you can just lean those against the wall over there. Ginny, Hermione, if you wouldn't mind holding those bandages a little longer, that would be much appreciated. Fred, George, make a stack of everything over by that corner of the room. Mrs. Weasley, please look through everything you have and what Ron and Harry brought to see if you can find anything that thickens blood or could act as a pain killer _- nothing_ that causes drowsiness. Okay, now everyone take three big steps back. Perfect."

"Annabeth, dear, do you want us to break the boards for you? You are using them as splints, right?" Lupin said. Annabeth simply walked over to the boards, picked one up, held it precisely in front of her, pulled up both of her feet and jumped on it. The board split and she looked at the two startled men in the corner.

"Thanks, but I know what I'm doing. Let's just say that this isn't my first rodeo." She made a move toward Ginny and Hermione, then changed her mind. You could practically see the gears turning. "Fred, George, did you guys grab duct tape?"

Two old sheets, a broken piece of a two-by-four, a lot of yelling, and a roll of duct tape later, Percy's broken right leg was in a makeshift splint. It was nasty, honestly. We suggested fixing it with magic, but Annabeth said that this was safer. Percy was pretty calm, except when Annabeth was trying to make sure the bones were in the right place to heal. That was when the yelling started. But now that we were done with that, we still had to do his left arm.

I hoped this one would be better. It wasn't. Percy's leg was broken in two places (ouch), but his arm was broken in four (double ouch). I remembered the time that Professor Lockhart had tried to fix my broken arm, and that had hurt really badly. It made me suddenly glad that we weren't trying to fix this with magic.

Finally, Annabeth told us that we should all get to bed, seeing as it was around midnight now. The girls were all going to stay to help her with all of the other wounds on Percy's torso. Honestly, I was exhausted. But then I thought about how tired Percy must have been. Annabeth said that he had been taking every night watch for who knows how long, and she had made him stay awake this whole time. She wanted to make sure he didn't pass out and never wake up. I decided that if Percy was really like what Annabeth had told us he was like, he would tell me to go to bed. So I tromped up the stairs and collapsed onto my mattress, drifting off to sleep.


	10. Chapter 10

**Hey everyone! So I'm sorry I'm a little late with this chapter, but I had a super busy weekend and such and here it is now! Maybe it will make you're Monday a little bit better! This is also where I had to start shaping the plot and my plan stopped, so that has now been done and we can all move forward! Hooray! Anyway, chapter. Here. Take it. Enjoy!**

**Percy's P.O.V.**

Annabeth sent the girls upstairs sometime around one in the morning, before she herself laid down next to me on the ground, reaching her hand up to grasp mine dangling off the edge of the couch. I sat there for a while, trying to think of something to say, but before I could, she was already asleep. Once I realized she was asleep, I decided to move her up onto the couch. It was sort of difficult with all of my broken parts, but the splints helped. I maneuvered her up onto the cushion, then pulled the blanket she was using over top of her before lying down on the ground next to her, our positions reversed. I had barely closed my eyes before the dreams came.

I was at Camp. Everyone was running around, looking sort of crazy, but that was pretty normal for Camp. However, what was not normal was the Athena Cabin looking at huge maps of Europe. It wasn't normal for the Hephaestus Cabin to be mimicking objects like the shield Daedelus had designed and drawing up blueprints for planes. And it definitely wasn't normal for there to be a giant schedule of search parties hanging in the dining pavilion. The Ares Cabin wasn't picking fights, they were collecting and distributing weapons. The Hermes Cabin wasn't pulling pranks or stealing, they were organizing fake passports for people who didn't have them. The Hypnos Cabin wasn't sleeping, they were practicing with weapons. And the Aphrodite Cabin looked ready to go to war.

I was really confused until Will Solace and Katie Gardner started talking to a crowd of campers. "Percy said they were going to tour Europe, so we have a lot of ground to cover. We don't know when in the first week they went missing, so they could be anywhere. I want Group Beta searching England. Group Gamma, France. Group Delta, Spain, and so on down the list. First Check if you are on the list to go searching," Katie began.

"If you're not on that list, you need to stay at camp to help from the home-front command base, Alpha One. If you are on the list, check which group you're in, and which country you're searching. Malcolm and the Athena Cabin placed everyone where they would be most useful to the effort. Check who you're group leader is, then go pack according to where you're going," Will continued, not even having to talk loudly because the crowd was silent.

"Take one of the information sheets next to your group," Katie said, motioning at huge stacks of papers filled with information, "whether you are staying here or traveling abroad. Don't worry, they're all in Greek. If you are traveling: weather conditions, packing instructions, and the length of the trip will be on the sheet as well as a reminder of your group, leader, and country. If you're staying, your sheet will contain a daily schedule that will be repeated with slight alterations until Percy and Annabeth are found. I expect all of you to report to your group leaders at eight o' clock sharp tomorrow morning. If you're late, there will be consequences. Are there any questions?" Katie was met with silence from the group yet again. "Great. Now form a line, check the board, take your sheets, and move out!"

I was shocked to see the actual formation of a line and people processing in an orderly fashion. I had never, ever seen a line of people at Camp Half-Blood, apart from the occasional blob of people going to dinner resembling a line. It wasn't natural for Camp to be that quiet, either. Annabeth and I needed to contact Camp first thing in the morning, that was for sure. Hopefully, they hadn't sent groups across the Atlantic yet. I hadn't felt anything, and if they were going in planes, then I wouldn't expect to. Boats, however, would be a different story, but planes are faster…for most people. I raced Jason plane-on-boat once and won, so there's always that, but considering they were looking for us, well, planes it was.

I heard the sound of some sort of walkie talkie, and all the sudden Katie was talking to Reyna via some sort of Hephaestus made communication device that resembled Bluetooth. The Romans must have been looking for us too. This was getting way out of hand. But before I could do anything, the dream took me another way. I saw Chiron through a window of the Big House, staring sadly at a picture of Annabeth and I. It was taken a few weeks after the Giant War, once everything was pretty much back in order. And then, after only a moment, the dream shifted again.

I was at my mother's apartment that she shared with Paul. I saw my mom, staring at the phone, not moving. There were plates and plates of blue chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen, and everything else was imperiously clean. I mean, there wasn't so much as a speck of dust on anything. Well, that sounded like my mom. Cleaning was a good distraction for her when she was upset. My stomach sank; I felt so guilty that this had happened again. My mother didn't deserve to have to do this at all, having me disappear, but she certainly shouldn't have had to worry about me disappearing every couple weeks after I was safe. She looked so sad, like this time I might not come back. However, I knew I would, at least this time. I needed to Iris Message her tomorrow as well, possibly a quick one before Camp.

Paul walked in. We had gotten a lot closer after he had married my mom. Plus, I didn't have to call him Mr. Blowfish/Blowfis anymore. But put simply, Paul looked awful. He looked worse than he did after exam week when he graded tests through the night without stopping. Paul sat down with my mom, and just held her hand for a while. Eventually, she looked at him and sighed. He stood up and wrapped his arms around her, keeping his eyes on the phone.

"Sally, I'm sure he's fine. Percy is a tough kid. He'll make the right choices, and he'll come back, just you wait. Besides, he's with Annabeth. That girl is smarter than both of us, remember? If anyone can keep him safe, she can. Now, why don't you go to bed, and I promise that if the phone rings, I'll come get you right away, okay? I'll be right here watching it, just get some sleep while you can," Paul said, and my heart filled with gratitude. Paul really was a great guy, and he did a great job taking care of my mom. I watched her smile and peck his cheek, then she went off to bed. It was really comforting to know that if I ever didn't come back, Paul would be there to watch out for her. Paul sat down on the chair and sighed. "Percy, where are you?"

My dream whisked me away again until I was back at an unfortunately familiar house. Malfoy Manner was in shambles. The pavement was cracked, the house was all but falling apart. My earthquake must have done some serious damage to the foundation. But I wasn't outside for long. Soon enough, I was back in the large room where I was when I left. There was still a giant gaping hole in the wall, and no one seemed to bother fixing it. Voldemort sat brooding in his chair with his snake, as per usual, but this time, he looked really concerned.

"Nagini, who is this boy? Certainly it wasn't Potter, was it? The Veritaserum didn't work, Bellatrix couldn't break him, surely the Potter boy couldn't have withstood that? Or could he? We must be very careful, Nagini. This boy could tip the balance, skew the war in their favor. Well, beware, Mr. Jackson. I'm coming for you," Tom finished, before returning to his silent, snake-stroking, nose-less brooding, and everything faded to black as I woke up to my girlfriend calling my name.

"Percy! Percy! _Perseus Jackson you get up right now!_" Annabeth yelled so loudly that I shot up with my eyes wide open and then flinched back, expecting my head to hit the top of my bunk in my cabin. Then I remembered where I was, and realized that everything hurt. On top of that, because I intelligently decided to sleep on the ground, everything ached while it hurt. It then occurred to me that Annabeth was not trying to get me up pleasantly while smiling at me because I still drool when I sleep. She sounded very, very upset. I was in big trouble. Why? My brain started waking up, and I groaned. I closed my eyes and sank back to the floor.

"Annabeth, now, let's not overreact here…" I said, muffling the words into my arm as I went back to sleep, knowing that it would never work. Sure enough, I was not only hit by another string of loud, emphatic words, but also by a pillow, which normally wouldn't have hurt, but today it made me groan again.

"Percy, what were you thinking?!" Annabeth began. I peeked up at her from my arms, and I saw that the entire household had stopped what they were doing in the kitchen. They all seemed to be watching with avid curiosity and slight confusion at the scene unfolding in the adjacent room. I winked at them, then twisted and grimaced until I was propped up by my non-broken arm and was facing Annabeth.

I smiled hesitantly. "…I was thinking that a good fiance would let his fiance sleep on the couch instead of the floor…?" Annabeth rolled her eyes and started pacing. I simply smiled and watched her golden blonde hair bounce in it's little curls like it always did when she was pacing because she was agitated.

"Percy," she started, attempting to contain herself, "I know that you were trying to be chivalrous and all that manly stuff, but this is ridiculous! Your back is carved up like lamb on a spit, you have broken limbs and a broken rib - I don't care if you were trying to do a good thing, it was just plain stupid to sleep on the ground for me! It certainly won't help you get any better!" Annabeth was practically shouting by the end, but I was mesmerized by her, so I wasn't really paying that much attention. "You are so thick sometimes! I don't need you to do those kinds of things for me; I can sleep on the floor, I can open car doors, I can fight monsters, I can do things for myself. I'll do it gladly, if I just know that you're safe while I do it! This whole protective, self-sacrificing thing has got to stop! When you are in a relationship, you are equals. Let me do half the work; I can do more than half! Just let me, darn it!"

Annabeth was practically blowing steam by the end of that speech, but I knew what this was really about. "This is because I told Tonks to take you and run, isn't it?" I asked, and Annabeth stopped pacing. "Look, Wise Girl, I'm not protecting you because I feel like I have to; quite honestly, you've never really needed to be protected in your life. I protect you because I want to, because to me you're worth protecting. So yeah, I try to do some of those things, because it makes me feel good to help you. You don't need help with much, Annabeth, so I take what I can get. But I couldn't stand for you to be at that place because a stupid guy with no hair and no nose plucked us out of vacation because I look like my dad. You know that is the way you're mom would have seen it. I needed to keep us both safe, and that was the best way to do it. We were never all three going to make it, you know that. Better to have two than none, right? Statistically speaking?"

Annabeth sighed. "Statistics or not, you could have let me stay. I don't care if my mom gets mad, I want to be with you, wherever you are. You know what that's like, I know you do." I smiled a guilty smile, thinking about just how far I would take that statement. "I just wish I could've been there with you. I want to protect you, too, but you make it extraordinarily difficult! I need you, Percy! I can't lose you again. Everyone else needs you, too. But I don't know what I would do if I just woke up again one day and you were gone for good. My whole world would collapse. It would take _years _to even come close to being able to keep living, but I would never be okay. I'd always have a giant hole inside me, and that gets really heavy over time. So Percy, what I'm trying to say is - Percy, are you listening to me?"

I smiled, and nodded confirmation that yes, I was listening. "Percy, what are you staring at?" She asked, hands on her hips, staring me down with her calculating stormy eyes.

"You are so beautiful, you know that?" I said impulsively, and I smiled up at her. The anger and frustration seeped away until she choked back a sob and sank down slowly next to me. I propped myself up rather painfully with my back against the couch, but I didn't care. Annabeth settled into my arms, clinging to me like I would disappear like vapor.

"I was so worried about you, Seaweed Brain. Don't you ever die on me like that again, okay?" Annabeth looked at me accusingly, as if I might croak right then just to spite her.

I sighed. "Well, what is this anyway? The third time? How many times have I 'died' over the course of my demigod life? It's quite an extensive list of almosts, but the ones where people actually thought I was dead? How many shrouds have I had?"

Annabeth thought for a moment. "Well," she finally said, "There was our first quest, you had a shroud to burn. Then that thing with Mount Saint Helens and you going missing for two weeks and then walking in on your own funeral, which was rude because it was a lovely service." I rolled my eyes and thought about the time I told her that it was a shame she wasn't going to get to use that first shroud because it was so nice looking. I think she punched me. Or at least she would now. "Then there was that time when you went missing for eight months. We had a shroud after maybe two months. Precautionary, of course, not intended for use. You should have seen how terrified they were when they came to ask me if they should make you a shroud at camp. They were convinced that I would blow up or something, but I thought it was okay, just in case. Besides, you seem to like burning your own shrouds, so I thought I should have one made just to be polite so you could burn it when you got back."

Annabeth smiled at me, and motioned with her hands toward me in a 'come on, you can do it' sort of gesture. "So that's three now?"

She looked at me with a sarcasticly exaggerated 'very good' look, and I smiled. But then she pursed her lips. "You know, I almost had a shroud made for you yesterday." I looked at her, startled. She saw my face, and shrugged. "As far as we know, that spell should have killed you. You were dead, so to speak. I was going to contact Chiron, but the girls came up with me and I never got a moment alone. So you would have had one waiting for you when we get back, but now I'm really relieved that I didn't call. We should probably let them know where we are. Do you think they noticed we were gone yet?"

My stomach dropped. My dream came flooding back to me. "Vlacas," I said, and Annabeth looked at me, slightly amused until she saw my expression and frowned.

"What, Percy? What's wrong?" She asked, and I shook my head, trying and failing to get up on my own.

"I had a dream last night. They're looking for us, Annabeth. They're sending search parties to Europe and everything. We have to tell them we're okay before they leave. They probably leave today. We can't let that many half-bloods come to Europe, they'll attract every monster on the continent! Come on!" I also thought about the fact that my mom was freaking out again, but I pushed that aside for the moment.

I stood and grabbed Annabeth's hand, yanking her up next to me. However, in my lack of foresight I stood up far too quickly and almost toppled right back down to the ground again. Annabeth steadied me, and I cursed myself for getting hurt. It was downright inconvenient for everyone. It seemed that the rest of the residents had gone back to their previous conversations and breakfast by then. Carefully, we made our way to the bathroom, closing the door behind us and trying not to draw the attention of the entire household.

I made a fine mist and angled it so the light filtered through to form a rainbow. Then Annabeth pulled a drachma out of her pocket and got ready to toss it through. I grabbed her arm first, and she looked at me questioningly. "First, let me try to get in a position where I can stand up on my own so people don't get worried. And can I do the thing?"

Annabeth rolled her eyes at the last part, but nodded. I leaned up against the wall for a minute, then I straightened up without it and gave her a thumbs up. I grabbed the towel rack on the wall to the side just out of sight just in case. Annabeth threw the drachma through and I said, "Oh Fleecy, do me a solid," and Annabeth just shook her head, "Show me Chiron at Camp Half-Blood."

The image swirled until the form of a certain centaur was prominently displayed in front of us. It was weird to think that we were in a wizard bathroom in England looking at a centaur who was two thousand years old through a rainbow, but when you compare that to all the other things in my life, it seemed practically commonplace.

"Chiron!" Annabeth called, and the centaur turned around swiftly, startled. Honestly? Chiron looked tired, like suddenly the last two thousand years caught up to him all at once. He relaxed significantly when he saw us.

"Percy, Annabeth, thank the gods. Where are you? What's happened? Are you all right?" Chiron sounded just as tired as he looked, and I wondered when the last time he slept was.

"We're in England, everything is fine, it was all a big misunderstanding. We got into the middle of this thing with these wizards, but we are perfectly safe now. Percy and I will be back eventually, but we're going to help a little bit here first, so don't expect us back for at least a few days, if not a few weeks. These wizards need help, and it should be easy for us to help them, and relatively harmless also. As we have so conveniently discovered," Annabeth shot me a look and I shrugged, "wizard spells can't kill half-bloods. So in any case, we might be beat up when we get back, but that's the worst it could be. When have we ever had odds like that?"

Chiron looked relieved enough to go frolic in a meadow of daisies in slow motion while listening to Frank Sinatra. However, he told us to be very careful, and we all thought that knowing me, I would find some way around that whole 'wizard spells can't kill us' rule, like a wizard poofing up a giant pile of bricks and then levitating it and dropping it on my head or something. Anyhow, we disconnected the message and Annabeth headed for the door.

"Hey, Annabeth?" I said and she turned around. "Aren't you forgetting something?" She stared at me blankly. "Someone?"

Annabeth's eyes widened and she said, "Sally!" before digging swiftly for another drachma from her pockets. I made sure the mist was still there and she tossed it through, letting me do the message call again.

The image that appeared was eerily like my dream; I was in the doorway to my mom's room, so I could see her sleeping, and Paul was sitting by the phone, grading some English tests. I guess some things never change. "Paul!" I whisper shouted. Paul looked up from his test, then to the phone again, and then looked toward my mom's room. "Paul!" I whisper yelled again, and he focused in on the spot where I was. His eyes widened impossibly and he stood up and quickly made his way over to where I was in the message.

"Percy?" Paul asked, slowly bringing his hand up to the message. "Is this one of those Iris Message things you always talk about? It's fascinating. I mean, I've seen them before, but never one with you in it!"

I was ready to face palm, but I was also so happy to see him and my mom that I couldn't even stop smiling. "Paul?" I said and he looked at me. "Kind of off task, dude." Paul's eyebrows shot up and he remembered that I had been missing for a while, again.

"Oh, right, of course," he said, and then it donned on him who he was talking to. "Percy! By the gods, how are you? Is that Annabeth with you? Are you alright? Where are you? What happened?"

I started trying to find the words to make a plausible story that wouldn't give my mother a heart attack, but then Paul said, "Let me wake up your mother, and then you better start answering questions, mister. She has been out of her mind worrying about you."

"Paul," I asked, "Are you sure we should wake her up? She looks exhausted."

Paul simply smiled at me and said, "If I don't wake her up, and she finds out I talked to you, we both know she'll ring my neck for it later." I smiled at the thought of talking to my mother ahead and nodded eagerly.

Paul poked his head in the doorway. "Sweetheart? There's someone who wants to talk to you. He's here…well, no, he's not here in the sense that he's here, but he's here and he probably doesn't have all that much time."

My mom rolled over and murmured into her pillow, "Who is it, Paul?"

"It's Percy."

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, my mother shot straight out of bed and ran to the doorway before I could even blink. I think she would have given the tree nymphs a run for their money at that speed, pardon the pun(s). "Percy?" She asked, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. It hurt to see her looking so tired and frail, but her enthusiasm made it bearable. "Percy? Honey, is that you?"

"Yeah, mom, it's me. I just wanted to let you know that Annabeth and I are okay. We're in England, we're with some nice people, and we're safe. We got a little sidetracked and had a run in with some dark wizards and got messed up in this whole thing with birds and now we're fine and we're going to help for a bit before we come back. But I promise," I said to my mother, who had yet to break my gaze, "we'll be back safely in a few weeks."

My mother tried to frown at me, but she couldn't seem to manage it, so it looked like this awkward laughing scowl that I couldn't help but smile upon seeing. "A few weeks? You're going to be gone for a few weeks? I never see you anymore. You're always gone killing monsters, or saving the world, or helping people in need. Why can't you just come home to your mother?" She sighed, and smiled. "But since you're with Annabeth, I guess it's okay." My mom grinned mischievously. "Now that's an idea. You and Annabeth, on vacation, fighting evil wizards. That sounds like something the two of you would like, doesn't it? I wonder if there are any romantic battle grounds that you could - "

"Mom!" I said, my cheeks red. "We're not going to - we're just - hhhhhh. Like I said, we'll be back in a few weeks. I love you."

"I love you too, sweetheart!" my Mom said, giving me one of her warmest smiles that made it feel like I was back home. "Do be careful! Annabeth, keep an eye on him for me, okay?"

"Sure thing, Sally. I'll keep him in line," Annabeth said, grinning slyly at me as I gave her a fake pouting face.

"You better watch out for her too, okay Percy? Protect each other, not that you've ever had that problem before. Be safe! Have fun fighting evil wizards! And by the gods, call me when you have the chance! No more of this disappearing and showing up later!" My mom smiled and waved before swiping her hand through the message.

Annabeth smiled at me. "Only you're mother, Percy."

"What?" I asked, not quite sure what she meant.

"Nothing," Annabeth said, grinning even wider. "Come on, let's go." She grabbed my hand and turned the doorknob. We stepped out to find everyone in the house staring at us in great confusion, seemingly expecting an explanation to how we just had two conversations with people who weren't in the house and why we were in the bathroom. Uh oh.

I swallowed and smiled nervously. "Hey guys, what did we miss?"


	11. Chapter 11

**Hello Everyone! **

**If you want the apology and the explanation, please read below.**

**If you don't care and just want me to give you the next chapter right now, skip to where it says Harry. Sorry.**

**Sooooooooooo...I have had the busiest month in my life thus far. It was show week for the show I was in, so if anyone knows about relatively serious theater productions, you don't really have time to sleep or eat or leave the theater, much less write. Then I had exam week. Then my class schedule changed and got really hard (or at least harder than it was). On top of that, I'm on my school newspaper so I had an article to research and write. And then I had to do a project for Latin club/Latin class that involved building a house (scale model of course, but it happened to have a working impluvium and heating and cooling system). Plus all additional school related things and you know, life and such. So after that long winded response of where I had gone, I must inform you that I am not giving up on this story, and that I intend to finish it. Without further ado, Chapter 11.**

**Harry's P.O.V. **

When I woke up at 7:30 that morning, I thought it would be the first normal, average day this week. However, that hope was crushed when I went downstairs. The first thing that struck me as weird was the scene I saw when I descended the last step and walked through the hall. Mrs. Weasley was hard at work in the kitchen, as per usual, and it seemed like all the boys were asleep. What was odd was the silent chaos in the living room.

When I had gone to bed last night, there had been blood, water, and duct tape all over the room. Percy had been on the couch, the girls had been helping Annabeth patch him up, and random things were strewn all over the floor. Now, Annabeth was on the couch, Percy was on the ground, and the girls were all furiously using magic and other means to clean up the room. There were pill bottles and heavy glass jars flying just under the ceiling over top of the furniture and the sleeping couple. Ginny and Hermione were scrubbing the blood out of the carpet with a bucket filled with soapy water and some old rags. Tonks was waving her wand, sending everything in a crazy tornado back to where it came from, objects simply darting past each other in all directions to find their homes. The weirdest part was that they were all doing it in complete silence because Percy and Annabeth were both sleeping in the middle of the room.

I stared at the odd scene for a few seconds before I saw the disaster coming. One of the tubs of water Annabeth had used last night was flying through the air and collided with a piece of wood. Now both of them were falling, right on top of Percy. The three girls dropped what they were doing and lunged at the falling objects. Tonks flicked her wand and they suspended, but the tub was tipping over until Hermoine and Ginny grabbed onto it, hoisting it over onto the ground. Percy was shifting in his sleep and all three of them held their breath, waiting for him to stop moving or wake up. Percy's arm flung out and at the same moment, the tub of water tipped over randomly, spilling everywhere. That was really weird, but I didn't think about that until later because I was too busy laughing silently as the three girls threw themselves in front of the water to make sure it didn't get Percy wet and potentially wake him up.

They finally noticed I was watching and the girls all glared at my laughing form until I stopped and backed away slowly, their gazes never leaving mine. I gulped and turned around to be faced with a smiling Mrs. Weasely, watching us all with that motherly look that couldn't be replaced. I smiled and accepted her hug as she guided me to a chair and started piling food in front of me the way she always did. I started to thank her but she shushed me and pointed to the sleeping pair in the other room. I still had no idea how Percy ended up on the floor, but I just smiled at Mrs. Weasley and she nodded knowingly, patting my head and going back to what she was doing.

I dug into my food as the rest of the Order came stumbling down the stairs one by one. Fred and George were last, and they made the mistake of snickering and cracking jokes on their way down, breaching the silence like a pile of cymbals falling down a flight of stairs. Mrs. Weasley shushed them emphatically, glaring at them so fiercely my eyes widened as I looked away and tried to be inconspicuous even though I knew the she would never direct that look at me. For whatever reason, Mrs. Weasley only seemed capable of being angry at her immediate family members. She reserved a special glare of disapproval for them, marking pretty much the only reason I was glad not to be a permanent part of the family.

After Fred and George took their seats, everyone was close to being finished eating. It wasn't until the twins had started eating that the silence was again broken by a piercing, loud voice. "Percy!" Annabeth must have yelled it, and man was she loud. There was a short pause before we heard again, "Percy!" I looked into the living room, and I saw Annabeth glaring down at Percy's sleeping form. While Mrs. Weasely's look earlier made me shrink, the look that Annabeth was giving Percy right then made me want to run from the room. I kind of knew what was coming next, so I casually put my hands up over my ears just before we heard Annabeth yell a third time, way louder than the first two times. "_Perseus Jackson you get up right now!_"

Percy shot up and flinched back as if he expected to hit something before opening his eyes to look around. He must have realized what was going on because he groaned, closing his eyes and sinking back down to the floor. He buried his head in his arms and seemed to be trying to go back to sleep. "Annabeth, now, let's not overreact here…" Percy said drowsily, his arm muffling the words.

Annabeth's scowl darkened even more as she picked up the stiff couch pillow behind her and threw it at his head. Percy groaned again as the pillow made impact and Annabeth frowned above him, probably getting ready to give him a big speech. "Percy, what were you thinking?!" Annabeth began, and Percy peeked out from under his arms. He eyed all of us in the kitchen silently watching, and winked at us before propping himself up with apparent pain on his good arm.

Percy smiled hesitantly. "…I was thinking that a good fiancé would let his fiancé sleep on the couch instead of on the floor…?" Percy stated drowsily and playfully. Annabeth rolled her eyes emphatically and started pacing. Percy was grinning sort of absently like he was watching something mesmerizing and beautiful.

"Percy," Annabeth started, attempting to contain herself, and I realized that we were all watching with avid fascination, invading what was clearly an intensely personal moment.

"Hey!" I whisper yelled to the table. No one responded; they were paying too close attention to the scene in the living room to notice. I tried again, a little louder this time, "Hey!" Two or three heads turned toward me and they elbowed the rest to get their attention. Within seconds the entire table was staring at me, which made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but I swallowed my nerves and said, "Don't you think we should give them at least a little privacy?"

It took a few seconds for everyone to realize what they'd been doing, and then they all had a little ah-ha moment when they recognized the fact that we had all been practically eaves dropping their entire discussion. "So…" Fred started. "The Chudley Cannons lost to the Irish a few days ago. How does that make you feel, Ronald?"

That started a very heated discussion between the two of them arguing for the sake of their favorite teams for quite some time. It also allowed the rest of us to branch off into our own little conversations. I was in the middle of a discussion with Lupin about a certain set of bans being placed by the ministry on certain activities of the animagus population when Hermione and Ginny shushed everyone at the table and pointed back to the living room at Percy and Annabeth. "No, come on, you guys-" I started to say, but they both shushed me and turned back to watch in avid fascination.

"…over time. So Percy, what I'm trying to say is – Percy, are you listening to me?" Percy still had that peaceful, mesmerized look on his face as he nodded in reply. "Percy, what are you staring at?" With her hands on her hips, staring down at him with hard, calculating eyes, she looked really intimidating.

"You are so beautiful, you know that?" Percy must have said it out of impulse, because there was no way any sane person would say that to Annabeth while being scrutinized under the look she had been aiming at him. Hermione, Ginny, and Mrs. Weasley all cooed at the statement, in various positions of dreamy comfort.

Percy smiled up at Annabeth. You could see her frustration evaporating until she was trying not to cry as she slid down next to him and settled into his arms. I heard a chorus of sighs from the girls and I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, but I was smiling too. They simply cared about each other so much that it couldn't be helped. I always imagined my parents being like that; I had never questioned my belief that they really loved each other. I knew it in my heart, because if they hadn't loved me and each other, then they wouldn't have tried so hard to protect me.

Sometimes I wondered if things hadn't happened the way they had, if Voldemort hadn't completely interrupted and ended their lives, if I would have had siblings. I thought about this most when I was around Ron's family. Ron had six siblings: Ginny, Fred and George, Percy, Bill, and Charlie. They were a pretty tight knit family, to be honest. Sometimes I wished I always had family like that; I certainly felt like I did while I was with them. But I tried not to think about "what ifs" most of the time for the same reason I had stopped looking for the Mirror of Erised. It wouldn't help me to live in the present, it would only trap me in what was missing from my past.

I glanced around the table. Most of the conversations had been picked up again, and Percy and Annabeth were talking too quietly for us to be able to hear what they were saying. I have to admit, I was curious what they were talking about. They were so natural together; you could see that they knew each other so well that they hardly ever had to even ask each other questions. For all I knew, they looked like they knew each other better than they knew themselves.

I looked at Ginny from across the table. She was laughing at Ron, whose hair had been turned green by one of the twins. I couldn't help but stare. She had this sort of lilting laugh that was like sunflowers drifting on a breeze in the sun. I was shaken out of my trance when Mr. Weasley grabbed my shoulder and I was thrust into a conversation about phonecalls.

"So Harry, what do Muggles use a 'telephone' for? Does it serve a purpose? Or is it simply decoration?" Mr. Weasley questioned curiously.

"Well, sir, telephones, erm, project the voice of the caller to the ear of the recipient and vice versa. It's a means of communication that is often used to make contact with a person who is not nearby and allows transmit over large distances," I started, never having really tried to explain a phone to anyone before.

"Does it really? Fascinating! What else can it do?" Mr. Weasley asked, his eyes bright.

"It, well, it…some of them, if the receiver isn't near the phone, can take a message from the caller and record it so that the receiver can listen to it later when he is home. That way you don't actually have to be at the phone to get a message across," I replied, rechecking what I was saying after I said it. It was rather peculiar if you thought about it.

"Astounding! It's really quite inventive – you know, if we were to, perhaps, bring one of these telephones to –"

Mr. Weasley was cut off by an elbow from his wife and the intense gazes of the girls at the end of the table. "What?" Mr. Weasley asked, and they all shushed him.

I looked into the living room and saw that Percy and Annabeth weren't there. Ginny leaned in and said, "They're in the washroom."

"Both of them?" Fred asked.

"Together?" George questioned.

"Yes," Hermione said. "It was so strange. Ginny and I, well, we watched them a bit more to make sure they were both okay, and then we heard them say that they should probably let someone know where they are. Annabeth asked Percy if he thought they knew they were gone yet, and Percy cursed in some other language. It sounded fairly ancient."

Why would Percy be cursing in an ancient language? I had heard of people reverting to their first language when they were upset, but what would that mean about Percy's first language?

Ginny picked up from where Hermione left off, "Annabeth asked him what was wrong, and he said that he had a dream that these people they needed to contact were looking for them. Then he said something about half-bloods and monsters, which didn't make any sense because we thought they didn't know about wizards before being captured. So the question we wanted to answer was why they knew half-blood wizards if they didn't seem to know about the wizarding world. But the strangest part was that they ran to the bathroom just now to contact these people. What kind of contact could they initiate in a bathroom?"

Hermione looked around the table. "I think that we could answer most of our questions if we listened a little bit to their conversation. I know it's not morally the best thing to do, but if it turns out that they happen to be dangerous or untrustworthy, then I think we should know. We don't know all that much about them, aside from what Annabeth has told us, but she could have been lying. They were at the manor for a long time, what if they turned?"

My stomach turned and I started feeling sick. What if the whole thing had been a lie? What if the Death Eaters were using them to infiltrate the Order? What if none of what Annabeth had said about Percy was true? What if she was using us? There were so many negative variables that I was kind of shocked that we had let them both in so easily. Their whole capture and escape could have been staged to get one on the inside in the Order.

I was the first to get up. I slowly pushed my chair out and crept over to the door to the washroom. I got just close enough to hear without pressing my face to the door. The first thing I heard was reassuring. "These wizards need help, and it should be easy for us to help them, and relatively harmless also." Annabeth was speaking, but it was confusing because it didn't sound like she was talking to Percy. I prodded my ear a couple times because I could have sworn I heard the faint noises of metal on metal. But then it got really weird because she said something that totally didn't make sense: "…wizard spells can't kill half-bloods." I stopped listening for a minute to process that. As far as I was concerned, all half-blooded wizards could be killed by the killing curse, but then I remembered that Percy had been hit with it and hadn't died. So had I, but that was entirely another story.

Hermione, Ron, Ginny, and Lupin had also come over to the door. "What are they saying?" Ron asked me in a whisper.

I shot him a look and whispered back, "They want to help us, and apparently wizard spells can't kill half-bloods."

Ron looked back at me the same way I had looked at him, but I waved him off before he had the chance to say anything else and motioned for him to listen.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Percy asked. "Someone?"

There was a pause before Annabeth blurted out, "Sally!" and there was a bit of a scuffle behind the door of movement and shuffling. I heard what sounded like a coin flipping, but it never made contact with anything. It was closely followed by Percy saying something in a different language. Why he had switched all of a sudden was a mystery to me; Ginny raised her eyebrows, and Ron just looked confused, but I decided to worry about that later.

Percy whispered something nearly inaudible, and impossible to discern, but it sounded like a name. He whispered it again, and I was relatively certain that he said, "Paul." Well, I knew one thing for certain: there was no one in that bathroom whose name was Paul. That meant that they were contacting someone not present, which meant they either wanted privacy or needed to use a bathroom to create this contact, maybe both.

"Percy?" I did a complete double take at the door. Although I had been convinced that they were contacting someone, I hadn't expected this "Paul" to respond. It sounded as clear as if he was standing behind the door with them. But there was no way to apparate into the house, so it wasn't possible for someone named Paul to have stumbled in from the outside. So how were they doing it?

Paul started speaking again. His voice was clearly different from Percy's; even their accents were slightly different. Paul probably didn't grow up in New York, if that was actually where Percy was from and Annabeth hadn't been lying. "Is this one of those Iris Message things you always talk about? It's fascinating. I mean, I've seen them before, but never one with you in it!"

I was utterly confused, and as I looked around I could see that the others were too, but I got the distinct impression nonetheless that Paul would have gotten along well with Mr. Weasely. They both seemed very curious, and I believe they would complement each other quite nicely because Paul appeared to be curious about the wizard world and Mr. Weasley was always wondering about the Muggle world. I wondered again if Percy and Annabeth had somehow known about the wizard world before they had been captured. The signs were saying that they did, but then that led to a bigger question: were they wizards? They appeared to be forming some kind of magical contact; wouldn't that make them wizards using a spell? And if so, did they have a wand? How did they get it? They had to have a wand. Right?

Hermione looked so confused it was almost laughable. I tried to remember what they called the message thing they were using. An Isis message? An Ipsis message? An Irish message? Hermione probably remembered, but judging from the look on her face, she had never heard of it before, and that was saying something. I jumped back into the conversation after thinking it over for a moment.

"Sweetheart? There's someone who wants to talk to you. He's here…well, no, he's not here in the sense that he's here, but he's here and he probably doesn't have all that much time." That sounded like Paul talking. I wondered who he was talking to; he said sweetheart, so maybe his wife? But then why would Percy want to talk to his wife?

I heard the muffled voice of a woman, who sounded very, very tired. I guess she asked who it was because Paul replied, "It's Percy."

The affect was instantaneous. You could hear sheets being thrown back and careless footsteps rushing around. "Percy?" she asked, as if she didn't believe that it was really him. "Percy? Honey, is that you?"

As she called him "honey", the pieces started falling into place. But my suspicions were confirmed when Percy said, "Yeah, mom, it's me." So that meant that this woman was Percy's mother. He had called his mother to tell her something. That meant that the man, Paul, was probably Percy's father. My heart tightened and I felt just a bit envious. Percy had both of his parents, but I didn't have either of mine. I hadn't really felt that way toward Ron or Hermione, but for some reason it was different with Percy, probably because we seemed so similar. It just didn't seem fair.

I tuned back into the end of the conversation. "…got messed up in this whole thing with birds," I chuckled as I realized Percy was referring to the Order of the Phoenix, "and now we're fine and we're going to help for a bit before we come back." So according to this, he was genuinely here to help. That was comforting, but this was only what he was telling his mother. When Ron had flown the flying car to come get me, his mother had caught him on the stairs and he had told her that he was going to get a glass of water. People lied to their mothers so they wouldn't be over-protective, from what I had discerned. What if that was what Percy was doing?

"…we'll be back safely in a few weeks," Percy finished. I looked at the small gathering by the door. Hermione's eyes were narrowed, but Ron looked like he was about to start laughing at all of Percy's interesting phrases and diction. But when I heard what his mother said a few seconds later, I stopped dead in my tracks. "I never see you anymore. You're always gone killing monsters, or saving the world, or helping people in need. Why can't you just come home to your mother?" I stood straight up and saw the shock in Ginny's eyes. Ron's ears were red, and Hermione's eyes were as big as an owl's. There was no mistaking now that something was up. The two of them were not who they said they were. There were things they weren't telling us, and apparently those things were huge.

"…sounds like something the two of you would like, doesn't it? I wonder if there are any romantic battle grounds that you could –"

Percy interrupted his mother, interjecting, "Mom! We're not going to – we're just – hhhhhh. Like I said, we'll be back in a few weeks. I love you." Well, as far as I knew, most bad guys didn't call their mothers and tell them that they loved them, so that was something, but there was definitely a serious discussion that needed to be had.

"I love you too, sweetheart! Do be careful! Annabeth, keep an eye on him for me, okay?" Percy's mother said.

Ginny motioned to everyone and we all started backing slowly away from the door as the conversation ended. After I was about five feet away, I rushed back to my seat before they opened the door. All of us were staring at them, confused and suspicious, ready for an explanation. Annabeth's face was a mask, but Percy's face had "I'm in trouble, aren't I?" written all over it.

Percy swallowed and smiled nervously. "Hey guys, what did we miss?"

**Hey! Last thing, you guys, I forgot to mention: If anyone is feeling particularly inspired and/or artistic and wants to make a cover for this story instead of that random picture I took at a restaurant, it would be very very very much appreciated. So hooray! Let's get artsy! :) **


	12. Chapter 12

**Hi everyone! So I know I'm a terrible person for not updating, but I had another set of exams! Hooray for testing! Anyway, I was really struggling with this chapter, but I think it turned out okay. The story will move faster after this chapter. Reviews make my day if you feel like it. If not, well, you know, happy reading! :)**

_**(Harry P.O.V.)**_

_Percy swallowed and smiled nervously. "Hey guys, what did we miss?"_

**Percy P.O.V.**

"Schist."

"Vlacas."

"Di Immortales!"

"Excuse me while I carefully step around the elephant in the room."

"So…how about the Yankees last week?"

"I think it's going to rain again today."

"Has that creepy portrait always been there? I thought that there was a spooky tapestry instead, but my mistake."

All of those thoughts started flooding into my mind as the wizards stared at us. I couldn't decide what to say to follow up my question, so I finally settled with, "Is that breakfast I smell, Mrs. Weasley?"

I could feel Annabeth glaring at me as I looked anywhere but at the wizards, checking every once in a while to see if they were still staring, which they were, before going back to avoiding eye contact.

I glanced over at Annabeth and she caught my gaze. Our thought conversation went something like this:

Me: "Should we tell them the truth?"

Annabeth: "Well, we have to tell them something."

Me: "What if we lie?"

Annabeth: "If we lie, we'll have to stick to it."

Me: "If we tell them the truth, we might gain permanent trust."

Annabeth: "But that means we have to trust them first."

Me: "How well do you know them?"

Annabeth: *pause* "Well enough. But let _me_ do the talking, okay?"

Me: "Sure thing, Wise Girl." *lopsided grin*

Annabeth: *eye roll* "Seaweed Brain."

We broke eye contact and walked synchronized forwards toward the table, which was kind of funny. The wizards were still staring at us, and no one spoke until Harry said, "Well, what in the name of Merlin was all that about?"

I chuckled at his saying and Annabeth smacked my arm, but she was smiling, too. It eased some of the tension in the room, and everyone leaned back a little bit into their seats.

"We'll be glad to tell you," Annabeth said warmly. She looked to Mrs. Weasely. "Do you mind if we sit down?"

"No dear, of course not. Sit, please," Mrs. Weasley said after being brought back out of her daze. "Percy, dear, did I hear you say you wanted breakfast?"

Annabeth glared at me again, but I smiled brightly and said, "Yes, please, Mrs. Weasely!"

Mrs. Weasley smiled and winked before heading off into the kitchen to make more food. Annabeth and I sat down and the whole table looked at us again. "First thing's first," Annabeth said. "We know you were listening." I glanced around the table and saw the bewildered faces of Fred and George, who looked as though they never got caught doing something as simple as listening at a door. Harry looked simply astounded that we had both noticed and ignored it. We both knew that they were listening; I just didn't know they were listening the whole time. I forgot what tipped me off, but once they started whispering to themselves, well, demigod hearing is pretty darn accurate. Annabeth just looked a little bit annoyed; after all, it was pretty rude. "How much did you hear?"

That was all the invitation Hermione needed to get going. "Well, we heard you say that we needed help, that wizard spells can't kill half-bloods – which doesn't make any sense because they can kill a half-blood just the same as any other wizard, we heard you talking to Sally, who is presumably Percy's mother and we heard you talking to Paul, who is presumably Percy's step father –"

"Woah, wait a minute. Why isn't Paul Percy's real father? How on Earth did you figure that Paul is Percy's step-father?" Ron was utterly confused by this assumption that Paul was not my actual father, but I thought it was rather simple.

"I call him Paul, Ron. First name basis, not dad or anything like that. When was the last time you called your dad Arthur?" I asked, and Ron stared at me curiously.

"So what happened to your real father, then?" Ron asked and there was a resounding thud as Hermione kicked Ron's shin under the table. "Ouch!" Ron exclaimed. "What the bloody hell was that for?"

Hermione glared at him and said, "It's not polite to ask someone that question, Ronald, _especially_ not in the vulgar manner in which you presented it."

I chuckled to myself and they both looked at me. "What?" I asked. "You remind me of us." I gestured to Annabeth and she nodded with a small grin. "Well, Ron, I've actually met him six or seven times, which is way ahead of the curve." Ron gave me an astounded look, and I turned to Annabeth. "Care to explain?"

Annabeth sighed, and I prepared myself for the worst. "So…" Annabeth started. "Hermione, how much do you know about ancient gods and goddesses?"

Four fist fights, six friendly demonstrations of physical restraint, two accidental instances of throwing sharp objects, several heated arguments and five stubborn glares later, everyone at the table was ready to consider the fact that the gods were real and still exist. It was at this point in time when Ron (who had graciously started three of the four fist fights) chose to be really stupid and posed a challenge to me: "Prove it."

I turned to Annabeth and smirked. By now, she was fairly riled up by the "logical arguments" that Hermione had posed in an attempt to assert herself as the more intelligent of the two, but Annabeth would have none of it. Annabeth argued back even harder until Hermione sat down in her seat and stared blankly at the table. Therefore, it was no surprise that now, with the offering of substantial proof toward her cause, Annabeth's grin would have put any Cheshire cat to shame. I silently chuckled a little bit, and turned back to Ron. "Big or small?"

Ron looked at me vacantly. "What?"

"You heard me," I said. "Big, or small?"

"Umm…" Ron started eloquently. "Does it matter? Proof is proof."

I grinned and winked at Annabeth. Her eyes widened and she opened her mouth to protest, but I beat her to it. I turned my face to the ceiling and said rather loudly, "Hey, Zeus, I heard your come-over got blown off in a storm a few weeks ago. Did you ever find it, or was it 'gone with the wind'?"

Annabeth brought a hand up to cover her mouth, probably to stop both her laughter and her protests that I was such an impulsive idiot. Suddenly, thunder boomed in dark clouds and a flash of lightening streaked outside. There was an electric noise that sounded like the bolt connecting with the street lamp outside. Then the clouds cleared and the sun shined down again. I turned to Ron. "Is that proof enough for you?"

Ron's eyes had become impossibly large, as had Harry's and Ginny's. Hermione looked like she had been hit by the lightning bolt herself, shocked and sparked. Ron was still staring dumbfounded at the spot where the lightning had flashed when Hermione asked the big question. "So what in the world of witchcraft does the existence of the gods have to do with what happened in the bathroom? What does it have to do with you?"

I took a deep breath and I looked at Annabeth. She eyed me for support, and braced herself for the explosion that was sure to come once we dropped the bomb. I grasped her hand under the table, and she gave me a small smile before taking a big breath in and letting it out in a string of dangerous words, "Percy and I are demigods. We're half mortal and half Greek god."

I wish that I could tell you that everyone just let out the breath that they had been holding and said, "Okay, that's cool. So what's for dinner?" Unfortunately, that was not how it played out.

It all started when Hermione sat up in her chair and said, "Excuse me?"

I sighed. This was going to be just as hard as I thought it was going to be. "Yeah, we're demigods, or half-bloods if you prefer. I'm a son of Poseidon and Annabeth is a daughter of Athena."

"The wisdom goddess? Seriously?" Hermoine asked. I swear, her eye twitched a little bit. "That's ridiculous."

Annabeth's eyes narrowed and I knew Hermione had struck a nerve. "Athena's not just the wisdom goddess, Granger. She's also the goddess of battle strategy. Don't position yourself against me, because one way or another, you will lose."

Hermoine got ready to protest, but then thought better of it and said, "I'm calling Dumbledore. He'll know if you're telling the truth, and he'll know where your loyalties lie."

I really hoped that I had misinterpreted that as a threat – I did have a reputation for being pretty clueless, but Annabeth's reaction told me all that I needed to know. She pulled out a knife as Hermoine was getting up and pinned her sleeve to the table. She didn't hit Hermoine, but that didn't stop a surprised squeal from bursting out of her mouth. Annabeth's eyes were dangerous storm clouds as she dared anyone to move.

Harry spoke first. "Annabeth, why don't you just put the knife down for a minute and we can talk this out."

Annabeth turned to Harry. "Only if _Ronald_ stops reaching for the kitchen knife."

I turned to Ron and quicker than he could think I scooped up the knife and threw it at the wall. It embedded itself to the hilt and left Ron and the twins staring shocked, watching an invisible tennis game from where the knife had been to where it was now stuck in the wall. I gave Annabeth a look and she withdrew her knife, still fuming but less on edge.

"Look," Annabeth said. "Believe us, don't believe us; it's your choice. But we mean you no harm. We want to help you, that's why we stayed, that's why we risked our lives-"

"Annabeth," I interjected. I had an idea, and I knew it would work, but she was on a roll.

"We did it to help, because we want the good side to win, okay? We find evil, or more often than not it finds us, and we destroy it. That's what we do. So believe what you want about our heritage-"

"_Annabeth_," I tried again.

"-but what matters is that you know that all we are trying to do is help you, and honestly? We are the best possible assets you would have on your side. You _need_ us, because we can turn the tide of this battle. We can put people behind you who know what they're doing, who have so much experience that they can not only teach you how to fight, but how to be the best people you can possibly be."

Annabeth took a breath and I seized the opportunity. _"Annabeth!"_

"_What_, Percy, what is so important that you feel the need to say it right this second?"

I scratched the back of my neck nervously. "I could just, you know, _show them_."

Annabeth stared at me for a minute, and then it donned on her. She had been so focused on proving her point with words and trying to prove that she was a daughter of Athena with no real visible powers that she had completely forgotten that I was there. Almost all of my powers were blatantly visible and could be used as the perfect example of proving that we were who we said we were.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, right. Sure. Just show them your powers – that could work. I was just getting around to that, but that was more of a last resort. But fine, if that's how you want to do it, go ahead."

I rolled my eyes at her, but she shot me a glare that would have left most monsters crying to their mothers, so I didn't say anything. I looked around awkwardly. Everyone was staring at me and it made me sort of uncomfortable. I turned back to Annabeth. "So…uh…what should I do?"

She raised her eyebrow and said, "Seriously Percy? Just pick something."

I looked at her worriedly. "Well, I don't want to take the house down or anything-"

I didn't get to finish whatever I was going to say, though, because when I started talking she shook her head, grabbed a cup of water on the table in front of us, and threw the water at my face. That water was now suspended in the air in front of me, in some strange amorphous shape. I must have felt especially impulsive at that particular moment because I moved the water around and changed it so it was in the shape of a 3 dimensional heart.

Everyone was probably freaking out, but I kept staring at the heart for a minute. I didn't want this one to go away, I wanted to keep it for Annabeth, if only for a little while. I had the spark of an idea. I closed my eyes and focused on Grover's most interesting episodes of National Geographic and Santa Claus. I pictured the giant chunks of ice at the poles, the glaciers in Alaska, and all the snow in New York. I focused on the solid water, and blew over the suspended heart. I opened my eyes and saw the heart, frozen solid in a beautiful swirling pattern, smooth and delicate. I plucked it out of the air and turned to Annabeth. All of her frustration and anger had faded as she stared in loving wonder at the new frozen sculpture I had created.

I handed the heart to her and she took it, never taking her eyes off of me. I nodded to it, and she looked down at it. It fit perfectly in her cupped hands, shining and sparkling when it caught the light. There was only one thing that was missing. I focused on the heart and imagined myself inside it with a chisel, carving two letters and a sign. I heard Annabeth gasp and looked up to see her eyes sparkling as the final flourish of a beautiful 'A' was carved into the middle of the solid ice. P + A, the two of us together forever. She stared at it with such love that I almost started to get jealous that she wasn't looking at _me_ like that, until I realized it would be stupid to be jealous of a piece of ice, especially one with our initials in it.

"Percy, it's…" Annabeth's voice was light and airy, her breaths shallow as she took it in. She looked up straight into my eyes, and I was left breathless by the amount of love that she held in them. "It's perfect."

"Thanks," I responded, my voice just as breathy as hers. We looked away at the exact same time; it was clear to us that if we didn't, then we might get a little bit carried away. I cleared my throat and looked at everyone. "So," I said. "Do you believe us now?"

Harry looked on both sides of him and took a breath. "I believe you." Even I had to admit, the kid had guts. I smiled at him and looked hopefully at the rest of the table. No one looked very happy about it, but they did look convinced.

Hermoine looked especially displeased, but she was surprisingly the second to say, "I believe you." I met her eyes and I really respected her in that moment; it was hard for people like her and Annabeth to admit that they were wrong. If she had a fatal flaw, my money was on hubris.

Eventually everyone around the table declared their belief, and Annabeth and I breathed a sigh of relief. The hard part was over now. There shouldn't be further complications regarding that dilemma.

It was at that particular moment when Mrs. Weasley returned from the kitchen. "Who wants breakfast?" she said as she entered the room with a huge grin. I got up to meet her halfway as she carried a tray with eggs, bacon, and sausage on it. However, she happened to glance over and see the knife that had found its place in the wall. She screamed and dropped the tray. Luckily, I was close enough to catch it. That really was a good thing; I get kind of grouchy when I don't have food. Then things blow up. No one likes that.

"Sorry, Mrs. Weasley, that was my fault. I just wanted to make sure that Ron didn't get his hands on it while we were arguing. I'll fix the wall later, for sure. I really am sorry if it gave you a fright, but there's nothing to worry about," I said, before carrying the tray back to my place at the table and digging in.

Annabeth gave me a sharp elbow and I looked up. "What? Shouldn't I eat it while it's warm?"

She rolled her eyes and said, "Perhaps it might be a good idea to explain to Mrs. Weasely what exactly is going on."

"Oh, there's no need dear, I heard the whole thing. I was listening, you see, from the kitchen. None of you lot are particularly quiet you know. I bet the neighbors could hear you yelling the way you were Ronald Weasley, and don't get me started on you two," Mrs. Weasely said, motioning to the twins. "But, now that everyone knows, it might be the opportune moment to tell you that I already knew most of what you said."

Annabeth and I looked at each other with a new understanding that hadn't been present before. I had wondered a bit why Mrs. Weasely didn't come bursting in when we were arguing. I guess she had wanted to see how it all played out. However, I don't think my slight surprise was anything compared to the look on Ginny's face. She had just spewed some orange liquid she had been drinking all over Harry. I guess she was taking a sip when her mother had revealed her knowledge and she was so surprised that she spit out her drink. Her resulting facial expression was so mixed that I almost laughed. She was shocked by her mother, embarrassed about spitting out her drink, horrified that she had turned Harry a putrid shade of orange with that liquid, confused and disoriented, and slightly resentful of her mother's poor choice in timing.

"So who are you related to and how? How did you come to know of this?" Annabeth asked, and I could see her mind running at a thousand miles an hour.

"My great great grandmother – that would be the children's great great great grandmother – was a demigod child of Mercury. She then in turn told her children, her children told their children, one of those children told my grandmother, my grandmother told my mother, and my mother told me. Now I'm telling all of you. We are Roman legacies of Mercury," Mrs. Weasley said confidently. There was a spark in her eye that I had missed before, and it reminded me of the spark that was in Travis's and Conor's eyes when they had pulled a supremely excellent prank. "Now I must ask, how is the feud between the Greeks and the Romans? You are both Greeks, are you not?"

"We are, Mrs. Weasley, and that feud has been settled. The Athena Parthenos was delivered," Annabeth winced and I grabbed her hand under the table, "and there is no longer any existing conflict. Our camps now work with each other instead of staying separate, sending people where they need to go, where they belong. And if they happen to feel more comfortable in the camp that is not their heritage, we take them in any way. It works splendidly."

"Amazing! I shan't ask how you pulled that off, dear girl, for I know it must have been painful, but I congratulate you all the same," Mrs. Weasley said. "Now that we are all on the same page, if you don't mind, are there any discrepancies that you left out of your first story of your lives because you were not ready to reveal your heritage? That did not sound like the life of a demigod the way you described it, if anything my mother told me was true of my great great grandmother's fate."

Annabeth and I smiled at each other. "Hermione," Annabeth said. The girl perked up and tried to hide her eagerness to know what the life of a demigod was truly like. That would change, certainly, but I suppose it would seem exciting at first. "Why don't you call whoever you were going to call earlier, Dumbledore or whoever you said, and anyone else in the Order who isn't already here. That way, we will only have to tell our story once."

"Certainly," Hermione said. She pushed out her chair and stood. "I'll do it right away. While I gather everyone, it might be wise to check Percy's bandages and to see if anything needs to be cleaned or adjusted."

"Oh, that's all right, Hermione," I said. "Water heals me; that's why Annabeth was so insistent about those tubs of water being brought in. I'm fine, I assure you."

Harry mumbled something to himself about water, and then looked up with enlightened eyes. "The water," he said, "when the girls were cleaning up in the other room. The water tipped over when you rolled in your sleep, but you didn't touch it. The water tipped when your arm flew out. It all makes sense now!"

I raised my eyebrows. I used my powers in my sleep? That was a first, at least, as far as I knew. Now that I thought about it though, I would really have no way of knowing. I guess some people might sleep walk and I might sleep hydrate or something. Weird.

As we sat waiting for Hermione to return, we talked briefly about different gods and goddesses, certain "myths" that Harry remembered from his Muggle school before he attended Hogwarts, and eventually we got on to the topic of how Percy managed to get kicked out of eight schools in eight consecutive years.

"How do you even do that?" Harry asked, looking around to make sure Hermione wasn't around. "How do you do that many different things wrong?"

"Now, now, Harry," I said with a sly grin, "who ever said I actually did anything wrong?"

Harry looked confused, and Annabeth snorted at my choice of phrasing. "But," Harry started, "but why else would…why did they…didn't you…what?"

I chuckled and Annabeth started sputtering laughter until we were both laughing immensely. "Well, Harry," Annabeth said, "he just has knack for getting blamed for things that are out of his control. He also attracts trouble like a magnet and most of all," Annabeth glanced at me slyly, "he has the worst luck of anyone that I have ever met."

I thought back to our first quest, when we were on a bus into the city and Alecto came back. Annabeth had said the very same thing then, and it was only more accurate now. I looked at her with approval and said, "Truer words were never spoken."

It was at that moment when Hermoine reentered the room and people started trickling in to the room from the front door until it was crowded and quite loud. Once Hermione signaled to me that everyone was here, I cleared my throat in an attempt to get their attention. However, they were all talking over each other, so I tried again. When they still didn't hear me, I looked over at Hermione, who was being overwhelmed by people asking her questions, and she caught my eyes and nodded. I took a breath and stomped my foot on the ground three times. Three resulting tremors shook the room, and everyone looked around, confused.

I cleared my throat again, and everyone finally paid attention. Then, when I felt all of their eyes on me, I decided it was a little too much attention and diverted them to Annabeth. "Annabeth has something to say," I said, and she gave me a look because she knew exactly what I was doing.

Annabeth stood up and appraised the room. "You are all here to here about our lives. We are not wizards, but we believe that our mutual friendship could benefit both of our kinds. Let us begin with an introduction. I am Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom and battle strategy." There was an instant murmuring among everyone until Annabeth gave me a look and I shook the ground again. Everyone still looked confused, but Annabeth jumped right back in. "And this is Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, god of the sea."

**Hey, if you care, review how much of Percy and Annabeth's life story that you want to be retold in the next chapter! Thanks!**


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